In 2015, about 49 million (one in five) U.S. adults used tobacco products every day or some days. Cigarettes were the most commonly used product. About 9.5 million adults used two or more tobacco products.
About one in five U.S. adults used some form of tobacco product in 2015, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products.
About 42 million adults – more than 87 percent of the nation’s nearly 49 million tobacco product users – reported using a combustible product such as cigarettes, cigars, or pipes (including hookahs and water pipes). The remaining adult tobacco users reported using e-cigarettes or smokeless tobacco products such as chewing tobacco, snuff, dip, snus, and dissolvable tobacco.
“Too many Americans are harmed by cigarette smoking, which is the nation’s leading preventable cause of death and disease,” said CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, M.D. “CDC will continue to use proven strategies to help smokers quit and to prevent children from using any tobacco products.”
Among all adults, cigarettes were the most commonly used product (15.1 percent); followed by e-cigarettes (3.5 percent); cigars, cigarillos, or filtered little cigars (3.4 percent); smokeless tobacco (2.3 percent); and pipes, water pipes, or hookahs (1.2 percent).
The data also show that:
Use of any tobacco product use was more common among males (25.2 percent) than among females (15.4 percent) and more common among adults ages 25–44 years (23.3 percent) than among those ages 65 years and older (11.1 percent). By race/ethnicity, tobacco product use ranged from 9.0 percent among Asians to 26.6 percent among American Indians/Alaska Natives. Rates of use of any tobacco product were higher among adults living in the Midwest; people with a General Equivalency Diploma (GED); people with annual household incomes under $35,000; adults uninsured or insured through Medicaid; people with a disability; and those who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Among all groups, use of any tobacco product was most common among adults with serious psychological distress (47.2 percent), compared with use among those without serious psychological distress (19.2 percent).
Cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Smoking kills an estimated 480,000 Americans each year, and about 16 million Americans suffer from a smoking-related illness. For more information or for free help quitting, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or go to www.smokefree.gov.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
