Fast Facts and Fact Sheets
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- Smoking leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body.
- Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death.
- The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year on marketing cigarettes.
- Smoking costs the United States billions of dollars each year.
- States do not spend much of the money they get from tobacco taxes and lawsuits to prevent smoking and help smokers quit. CDC recommends that states spend 12% of those funds on tobacco control.
- In 2018, 13.7% of all adults (34.2 million people) currently smoked cigarettes: 15.6% of men, 12.0% of women.
- Thousands of young people start smoking cigarettes every day.
- Many adult cigarette smokers want to quit smoking.
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Page last reviewed: November 15, 2019