Tobacco Control

CDC's Smoking and Health Activities

• The Office on Smoking and Health serves as the focal point for HHS smoking and health activities
• Provides financial and technical assistance to 50 state health departments, the District of Columbia, and 11 national organizations.
• Conducts surveillance and analysis of tobacco use and its impact.
• Distributes technical, health communication, and educational materials to states and other constituents.
• Produces the Surgeon General’s report on the health consequences of smoking.
• Serves as a World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating center for smoking and health.
• Collaborates with CDC’s toxicology laboratory on analysis of tobacco products.

Impact of Tobacco Use In the United States:

About 430,000 deaths are attributed to cigarette smoking each year. In 1997, the direct medical costs associated with smoking were more than $50 billion, or about 7% of the total cost of health care in the United States. Approximately one of every two lifelong smokers will eventually die of smoking.

If current smoking patterns continue, an estimated 25 million persons alive today, including 5 million children younger than 18 years of age, will die prematurely of smoking-attributable diseases. About 10 million people in the United States have died of smoking-attributable causes—including lung and other cancers, emphysema and other respiratory diseases, and heart disease—since the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health in 1964.

For more information visit:  http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/tobaccou.htm