CDC: Most smokers want to quit, but few do
By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times
When it comes to quitting smoking, the lungs might be willing but the flesh is weak. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that while about 69 percent of smokers last year wanted to quit, only about a tenth were able to do so.
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report used data from a large national survey from 2001 through 2010. Among the smokers surveyed most — 68.8 percent — wanted to quit for good in 2010, and 52.4 percent tried to quit in the previous year. Only 6.2 percent succeeded, however.
When broken down by race and ethnicity, 75.6 percent of blacks were interested in quitting, followed by 69.1 percent of whites and 61 percent of Latinos. Blacks also had the most attempts at quitting (59.1 percent), followed by whites (50.7 percent). But more whites were likely to quit smoking than blacks 12.6 percent versus 3.3 percent. The discrepancy, the report said, could be due to blacks’ lower use of proven stop-smoking treatments as well as their higher use of menthol cigarettes, which may be linked with fewer successful quit attempts among blacks.