CDC Says Cigarette Smoking Declining, but Other Tobacco Stable

It is common knowledge that smoking can lead to bad breath, dulled sense of taste and smell, gum disease and oral cancer, stained teeth and tongue, and slow healing of tooth extraction or other surgery—just to name a few. As recently reported of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarette smoking has decreased in adults in the United States over the past 50 years, but the use of other tobacco products has not changed, and this includes cigars and smokeless tobacco. Additionally, since the invention of electronic cigarettes, more Americans have been using those over traditional cigarettes, as shown in the 2012-13 National Adult Tobacco Survey.

It’s also being reported that 21.3 percent of adult Americans, or 1 in 5, used a tobacco substance product every day or some days, and 25.2 percent used a tobacco product every day, some days, or rarely. Also, those who smoked “every day or some days” lowered from 19.5 percent in the 2009-2010 National Adult Tobacco Survey to 18 percent. This is good, but the maintained use of other tobacco products is still not desirable. The survey’s participants who have an “every day or some days” use of other tobacco products showed: two percent cigars, 0.3 percent regular pipes, 0.5 percent water pipes/hookah, 1.9 percent e-cigarettes, and 2.6 percent smokeless tobacco.

In January 2014, the U.S. announced that it was the 50th anniversary of the very first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, which expanded the list of the illnesses linked to tobacco use. The report claimed that disease and death from tobacco were “overwhelmingly caused by cigarettes and other combusted products.”

An average of 20 million Americans has died because of tobacco use since the first Surgeon General’s warning in 1964. This includes people who have died because of secondhand smoke, with this number reaching around 2.5 million people. This is why some states, such as Arkansas, Maine, and Oregon, have made it illegal to smoke a cigarette when someone under a certain age is present because of the harm that secondhand smoke has on people who breathe it in.

The dangers of tobacco use are very serious, and they can affect your life for years to come. A ten-minute cigarette can cause a lifetime of damage just as easily as a lifetime of smoking or using other tobacco products can cripple your health with irreversible results.

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