{"id":14608,"date":"2014-02-07T09:04:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T14:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/who-smokes-in-america\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:23:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:23:04","slug":"who-smokes-in-america","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/02\/07\/who-smokes-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Who smokes in America?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm6144a2.htm?s_cid=%20mm6144a2.htm_w#tab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-\" alt=\"FT_14.02.06_WhoSmokes_310px\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2014\/02\/FT_14.02.06_WhoSmokes_310px.png\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Drugstore chain CVS has received a lot of attention, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2014\/02\/05\/why-cvs-thinks-it-can-win-big-by-ending-cigarette-sales\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">most of it positive<\/a>, for its decision to <a href=\"http:\/\/info.cvscaremark.com\/newsroom\/press-releases\/cvs-caremark-stop-selling-tobacco-all-cvspharmacy-locations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">stop selling cigarettes<\/a> and other tobacco products by Oct. 1. The company expects to lose $2 billion in sales to tobacco shoppers, though it says it&#8217;s identified unspecified &#8220;incremental opportunities that are expected to offset the profitability impact.&#8221; It&#8217;s worth noting, though, that CVS is leaving a shrinking business: Not only do fewer Americans smoke, but those who still do are smoking less.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2011, 19% of adult Americans, or 43.8 million, were current cigarette smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&#8217;s most recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm6144a2.htm?s_cid=%20mm6144a2.htm_w#tab\">National Health Interview Survey<\/a>. Those figures are down \u00a0from 22.3% (or 45.8 million) in 2002, though smoking prevalence has hovered around 20% for the past several years. By contrast, in 1965 &#8212; a year after the first Surgeon General&#8217;s report on smoking and health &#8212; 41.9% of U.S. adults smoked. As recently as 1979, fully a third did so.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smoking rates today are highest among the poor and less-educated, according to government data. For instance, 29% of people living below the official poverty level smoke, versus 17.9% of people at or above poverty. People whose highest educational level is a General Educational Development (GED) certificate &#8212; typically high-school dropouts &#8212; are nine times more likely to smoke than people with graduate degrees (45.3% versus 5%).<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smoking rates vary considerably by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/hus\/2012\/057.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">geography<\/a>. The highest rates in the 2009-2011 period were in nonurban counties in the South (31.9%) and small towns in the South (31%) and Midwest (30%). The lowest rates are in big Western cities (15%) and their suburban fringes (16.9%).<!--more--><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">American smokers aren&#8217;t lighting up the way they used to. In 1980, according to data compiled by the <a href=\"http:\/\/viz.healthmetricsandevaluation.org\/tobacco\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation<\/a>, U.S. smokers consumed an average 12,000 cigarettes &#8212; more than a pack and a half a day. By 2012, per-smoker consumption had fallen to 8,200 cigarettes, or just over a pack a day.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">CVS hopes that exiting the tobacco business will aid its efforts to<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304851104579363520905849600?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304851104579363520905849600.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> recast itself<\/a> as not just a drugstore but a healthcare provider, especially since Americans don&#8217;t generally associate smoking and health. In a Pew Research Center <a href=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/politics\/2013\/11\/12\/public-agrees-on-obesitys-impact-not-governments-role\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">survey<\/a> last year, 53% called cigarette smoking an &#8220;extremely&#8221; or &#8220;very&#8221; serious public health problem; 45% said the country was making progress in addressing the issue of smoking, while 13% said it was losing ground.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CVS&#8217; decision to stop selling tobacco products comes as smoking continues to decline and smokers are consuming fewer cigarettes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[105,267],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[520],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-14608","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-health-policy","category-medicine-health","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-politics"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":378,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/02\/07\/who-smokes-in-america\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Who smokes in America?","description":"CVS' decision to stop selling tobacco products comes as smoking continues to decline and smokers are consuming fewer cigarettes.","og_title":"Who smokes in America?","og_description":"CVS' decision to stop selling tobacco products comes as smoking continues to decline and smokers are consuming fewer cigarettes.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"01746daf-f9ac-48e5-b89d-8655a2d7755a","termId":842}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103916,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14608\/revisions\/103916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=14608"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=14608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}