Original articleDemographic Differences in Patterns in the Incidence of Smoking Cessation: United States 1950–1990
Section snippets
Selected Abbreviations and Acronyms
NHIS = National Health Interview Survey
Data Source
The NHIS, conducted annually by the National Center for Health Statistics, are random cross-sectional surveys of the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population. Periodically since the mid 1960s, a special Tobacco Use Supplement is included yielding sample sizes varying from 10,000 to 80,000 respondents and reported response rates exceeding 85%. The NHIS sampling methods change every decade, and details concerning survey methodology are reported elsewhere 23, 24. Before 1974, surveys
Results
Figure 1 shows the overall incidence of smoking cessation for the entire U.S. population aged 20 through 50 years between 1950 and 1990. Except for 1950, there was little evidence of much quitting activity until 1955, when quitting incidence nearly doubled (significant), but still remained below 1%. Quitting began to increase in the early 1960s; it peaked at 1.8% in 1964, remained high in 1965, but decreased in 1966. In 1967, however, the incidence of smoking cessation increased again, remained
Discussion
From levels generally well under 1%/year in the early 1950s, the incidence of quitting for U.S. smokers increased to just under 5%/year in 1990. Yet the upward trend was not smooth, and there were differences for demographic subgroups of the population.
The early evidence linking smoking to cancer, first published in the 1950s and summarized in the official reports of the early 1960s, was associated with increased quitting, particularly in middle-aged men. Middle-aged and older men were the
Conclusions
The patterns in the incidence of quitting documented in this article point to considerable success for the public health smoking prevention campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, but an overall annual quitting incidence of 5% for 1990 is still very low. Incidence of quitting appears to be a fairly sensitive indicator of relatively short-term changes in quitting in population subgroups, suggesting that this measure should facilitate evaluation of future tobacco control efforts.
Acknowledgements
Preparation of this article was supported by the Cancer Prevention Research Unit Grant No. CA72092, funded by the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.
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