Editorial: Smoking decreasing, but not extinguished | Opinion

The best news we’ve heard in some time is that eight of nine adults in the United States don’t smoke. The worst news is that one in nine still does.

And right behind the latter is that about one in 17 uses electronic cigarettes. That insidious industry tries to persuade cigarette smokers that switching to e-cigarettes will release them from the lethal grip tobacco has on them. Still more loathsome is the industry’s unrelenting efforts to seduce kids into smoking its products.

But let’s try to at least applaud the good news in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recently released statistics. A survey of 27,000 adults concluded that the rate of smoking among adults in America has dropped from 12.5 percent in 2021 to 11 percent now.

Some smokers are catching on. The habit will kill you. It will cost you dearly – a pack of cigarettes now costs an outrageous $10, or so, a pack. And it will cost the rest of us via health-care expenses through Medicaid and Medicare.

In the 1960s, 46 percent of American adults smoked. When science informed the world that inhaling cigarette smoke was a form of suicide, the smart people began to spurn the habit.

It wasn’t easy. Tobacco is addictive, and it took courage, will power and a deep sense of intelligence and reason to abandon it.

From 46 percent to 11 percent is an enormous stride in the right direction. But the job is far from over. As unfathomable as it may seem to non-smokers, way, way too many people are still hooked.

Non-smokers typically view smokers with a combination of pity and resentment.

The pity comes from the fact that smokers are engaging, willfully, in an act that will most likely disable and kill them. It is a habit that is totally without merit, and everybody knows it. Various cancers, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and narrowing of the arteries are only some of the disastrous results of sucking on cigarettes.

It stands to reason that smokers don’t want to smoke. Who wants to keep up a habit that stifles breathing, little by little, and will eventually lead to death?

The resentment springs from the unattractive appearance of smoking and the unpleasant environment created by the smoke itself. And then, of course, is the inexplicable tendency of smokers to simply toss their used cigarettes onto public grounds and walk away, as if dropping refuse anywhere is perfectly acceptable. Pure reason would tell you smokers should be engaging in their habit only in complete secrecy out of sheer embarrassment.

But, while smoking is on a measurable downward slope, e-cigarette use is trending upward. While only 2 percent of high-school students were smoking traditional cigarettes last year, 14 percent were using e-cigarettes. That is completely unacceptable.

This serious fight against all smoking must not end until all cigarette makers are out of business and normal breathing has been restored for everyone.