US Adult smoking rates reach lowest point in 50 years

Good news for American health - fewer people are smoking as the rate hit its lowest point in 50 years, federal health experts reported Wednesday.

In fact, the rate of cigarette smoking has dropped from about 21 percent in 2005 to 18 percent in 2013. That means the number of cigarette smokers dropped from 45.1 million to 42.1 million, despite the increasing population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Despite country's population has grown, the number of smokers declined by 3 million to 42.1 million during that time, CDC said.

"There is encouraging news in this study, but we still have much more work to do to help people quit," said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.

The latest data find that cigarette smoking remains relatively popular in several demographic groups, including people in poverty (29 percent), people of multiple races (27 percent), people with a disability (23 percent) and people who are gay or lesbian (27 percent).

Men (21 percent) are more likely to smoke than women (15 percent), and people with lower educations are more likely to smoke than highly educated ones: Only about 6 percent of people with a graduate degree and 9 percent with an undergraduate degree smoke, compared with 22 percent of those with a high school degree and 41 percent with a GED high school-equivalency diploma.

Lesbians, gays and bisexual adults smoke about 50 percent more cigarettes than heterosexual people, the CDC said.

Susan Liss, executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, says states are often not doing nearly enough to battle smoking.

"In recent years, states have cut and severely underfunded tobacco prevention and cessation programs and progress at the state level in enacting higher tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws has slowed greatly," Liss said in a statement.

"Without a serious national commitment to adopt proven strategies to reduce death and disease caused by tobacco, 5.6 million children alive today will die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases."