Here’s something worth celebrating: the U.S. smoking rate just hit another record low. According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 9% of adults were current smokers in 2024. That’s down from roughly 42% in the mid-1960s, a drop that represents millions of lives saved and countless cases of preventable disease avoided.
The numbers, first reported by the Associated Press, are the kind of public health win that doesn’t get enough attention. Smoking has long been the leading cause of preventable death in this country, linked to lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, and a whole host of other serious health problems. Watching that rate steadily decline over decades is genuinely encouraging.
What drove the decline? A combination of factors, honestly. Higher cigarette taxes made smoking more expensive. Price hikes followed. Smoking bans cropped up in workplaces, restaurants, and public spaces. Anti-smoking campaigns ran for years, changing what was once considered socially acceptable. It was a slow-moving, multi-pronged effort that ultimately worked.
But here’s where things get complicated.
Yolonda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, pointed out that recent budget cuts under the Trump administration eliminated the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health entirely. That office ran the “Tips from Former Smokers” advertising campaign, which research suggests helped more than a million Americans quit smoking and saved over $7 billion in healthcare costs. Richardson called for restoring that funding, arguing the work isn’t done even though the numbers look promising.
That tension is worth sitting with. We’ve achieved something remarkable, yet the infrastructure that got us here is being dismantled. The smoking rate keeps falling, but partly because of investments made years ago. What happens next?
Electronic cigarettes haven’t filled the void in a meaningful way, either. E-cigarette use among adults has held steady at around 7% in 2025, according to the survey data. That’s not zero, and public health experts still have concerns about youth vaping and the long-term effects of these products.
There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic about where we are. But public health isn’t a destination. It’s an ongoing project. The question isn’t just whether we’ve made progress, but whether we’re willing to keep making it.
