The percentage of pack-a-day smokers dropped markedly over the last 40
years, especially in California, a national survey showed.
The percentage of U.S. adults who smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day fell
from 23.2% in 1965 to 7.2% in 2007, reported John Pierce, PhD, of the
University of California San Diego, and colleagues in the March 16 issue of
the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The decline was even more dramatic in California, where the numbers went
from 22.9% to just 2.6%.
Pierce and his colleagues looked at data from National Health Interview
Surveys conducted between 1965 and 1994 and the Current Population Survey
Tobacco Supplements 1992-2007, totaling 139,176 respondents from California
and 1,662,353 for the U.S. overall.
They found in 1965, 56% of all smokers in the U.S. were high-intensity
smokers (?20 cigarettes a day, equal to a pack of cigarettes). By 2007, that
percentage had fallen to 40% of all smokers.
These declines, however, weren't accompanied by an increase in the
prevalence of less-intense smoking.
The researchers defined moderate-intensity smoking as puffing 10 to 19
cigarettes a day and low-intensity smoking as having zero to nine cigarettes
a day.
At the same time, they noted, fewer young people appeared to be taking up
the habit over the years.
Among people born between 1920 and 1929, 40.5% were
moderate-to-high-intensity smokers (?10 cigarettes a day) in 1965, but that
percentage fell across successive birth cohorts.
For instance, among those born between 1970 and 1979, only 18.3% in the U.S.
overall reported being moderate-to-high-intensity smokers, as did just 9.7%
in California.
"Lots of people have been quitting on their own and that's been consistent
over time, but the real thing we know is that the decline in smoking has
come from young people not starting,"
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/25353
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