It has been 50 years since the U.S. Surgeon General released the first Report on Smoking and Health and the fight against tobacco has made substantial progress.
Nationwide smoking rates have dropped from 42% to 18% and only 21% of Alaskans smoked in 2012, according to a report released Friday.
Alaska Tobacco Control Network Deputy Program Manager, Alison Kulas, talked about what’s ahead:
Kulas: “The challenge today is to make sure that we’re implementing sustained public health practices that we know work. We’ve seen drops happen across the nation as well as in Alaska, and we really just want to keep up that great work and redouble our efforts.”
Alaska high school youth smoking has also declined by 40 percent between 2007 and 2013, according to the report. However, Kulas said the organization is working to encourage everyone to reduce smoking so that eventually there won’t be any high school smoking.
Kulas: “Because it is society as a whole that really should be working to prevent kids from starting to smoke and really reducing tobacco’s impact. Because we know if the current rates continue 5.6 American kids alive today would die early from smoking.”
The Center for Disease Control ranks smoking as the number one preventable cause of death in America.
