Could it be cause-and-effect? Maybe, but we don t yet have the evidence to prove it, only an amazing coincidence: The CDC s new stats on adult tobacco use in America show a 1.1 percent decline between 2012 and 2013 (from 19.1 to 18.0 percent) and a similar increase in the use of e-cigarettes, now 1.9 percent who claim they vape daily or sometimes. Although the rate of cigarette smoking declined slightly, the growth in our population over that period means that the number of committed smokers remains in the 42 million range, among whom (according to another CDC report from a few months ago) almost 500,000 die prematurely each year.
The report was crafted by the CDC s Office on Smoking and Health, led by Dr. Israel T. Agaku. Contained therein is a veritable snowstorm of data based on several variables, including age, education, income, locality, and others. Twenty-one percent of us used a tobacco product, including cigars, pipes, and smokeless, daily or some days.
For more specifics, read this paragraph, thanks to Medscape:
Demographic breakdowns show where tobacco use is more prevalent: more men (26.2%) than women (15.4%); more younger adults (25.2% for ages 25 to 44 vs 9.5% for those 65 and older); more lower-income adults (29.8% of those with household incomes less than $20,000 compared with 12.8% of those making $100,000 or more); more among the less educated (43.8% among adults with a General Education Development certificate and 6.3% among those with graduate degree); more in the Midwest (23.9% compared with the West at 19%); and more among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults (30.8%, compared with 20.5% for heterosexual adults).
(*There is nothing too surprising in that dataset).
The authors credit the recent, paltry decline in smoking to these factors: increasing tobacco product prices, comprehensive smoke-free laws, high-impact anti-tobacco mass media campaigns, and increasing access to help quitting, in conjunction with Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco products.
The factors the authors note did certainly help to reduce the toll of smoking during the 20th century but those days are gone, as is obvious by the minimal decline over the past decade. It continues to astound me how the officials running our nation s anti-smoking agencies refuse to acknowledge the handwriting staring at them on the wall: the decline in adult smoking is barely different from a statistical chance effect. The CDC and other leaders fiddle while millions keep on smoking and a half-million die horribly each year. They have identified the problem: reduced-harm nicotine products, specifically e-cigarettes, and have decided that they shall not be moved from their unholy crusade, no matter what the data show, on e-cigs safety, on the millions who have switched, on the lack of impact all the FDA-approved products and CDC-campaigns have had. It s as if they were called to put out the fire of cigarette-related death, and came equipped only with gasoline. Yet, they manage to not only take credit for non-existent progress, they have the consummate gall to cite the FDA s regulation of tobacco products, which has accomplished absolutely nothing. Well, time marches on, and I know whose approach will wind up as the correct one within the next few years at most.