Date: Thursday, Jan. 25, 1996
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tim Hensley or Llelwyn Grant 770-488-5493, CDC Office of
Public Affairs 404-639-3286

CDC REPORT ON TOBACCO USE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released a new report that summarizes the data on tobacco use in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. State Tobacco Control Highlights, 1996 is the first compilation of state-based data on the prevalence of tobacco use, the health impact and costs associated with tobacco use, tobacco control laws, tobacco agriculture and manufacturing, and tobacco use prevention and control programs.

According to the CDC report, tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year at an annual cost of more than $50 billion. Nationally, smoking results in more than 5 million years of potential life lost each year.

These data show wide variations among states in the use of tobacco and in policies to reduce tobacco use. For example:

• Past-month smoking among young people (grades 9-12) ranges from 16.7 percent in D.C. to 38.9 percent in West Virginia, more than a two-fold difference. [Note: Data recently released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in its 1995 Monitoring the Future Study showed a continued increase in monthly and daily tobacco use among 8th, 10th and 12th graders. The increase in daily smoking among 12th graders (up to 21.6 percent from 19.4 percent in 1994) is the highest reported since 1979.]
• Daily smoking among adults ranges from 15.1 percent in Utah to 30.3 percent in Nevada, also more than a two-fold difference. Similarly, the smoking-related death rate is more than twice as high in Nevada (478 deaths per 100,000 population) as in Utah (218).
• Smokeless tobacco use varies even more. Among young people, prevalence of use ranges from 1.6 percent in D.C. to 24 percent in Montana. Among adults, prevalence ranges from 0.1 percent in Connecticut to 7.7 percent in West Virginia.
• Although 21 states have laws that restrict smoking in private worksites, only one (California) meets the nation's Healthy People 2000 objective to eliminate nonsmokers' exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
  
  
• State-specific data highlight not only the wide range of smoking rates and policies in the United States, but also the wide range of smoking-related death rates -- and how less smoking translates to fewer deaths. This report shows there is much room for progress in reducing tobacco use and improving tobacco control measures, but that such progress can be -- and is being -- achieved.

Copies of the report are available to the press from CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.