9781422272275

Cigarette Popularity Remains High Cigarettes remain the most popular tobacco product on the market, and tobacco companies earn billions of dollars every year from their sale. This popularity remains high even though manufacturers are required to print warnings on every pack that explain the dangers of smoking. That said, the fashionableness of cigarette smoking has declined slightly in the face of the growing popularity of vaping. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the percentage of young people who smoke decreased from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 15.5 percent in 2016. That leaves around 38 million people in the United States smoking cigarettes either every day or on some days. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that tobacco and nicotine use has declined. If anything, nicotine use has probably increased. Many individuals who once smoked cigarettes (or young people who likely would have started smoking) have instead turned to the use of electronic nicotine-delivery systems, also known as e-cigarettes. These products are marketed as cessation tools that can help people quit using cancer-causing cigarettes, but by providing nicotine they serve as an alternate form of addiction. Experts estimate that 55 million adults will use e-cigarettes or other vaping devices by 2021—nearly 20 million more than the number who currently smoke cigarettes. Breaking down the statistics even further reveals more problematic concerns—even when the data on cigarette smoking appears to be positive. For example, between 2005 and 2016 the average number of cigarettes smoked daily in the United States dropped from seventeen to fourteen, while the percentage of the US population who smoked fewer than ten cigarettes per day rose from 16.4 percent to 25 percent. Those should be good trends, but CDC research indicates that the decline is not because fewer people are

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Cigarettes and Tobacco Products: The Predatory Drug