Fast Facts and Fact Sheets
- 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.
- 14.0% of all adults (34.3 million people): 15.8% of men, 12.2% of women were current cigarette smokers in 2017.
- Thousands of young people start smoking cigarettes every day.
- Many adult cigarette smokers want to quit smoking.
Page last reviewed: February 6, 2019