U.S. stop-smoking efforts stalled, report shows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts to help smokers kick the habit have stalled in the United States, with hardly any recent change in smoking rates, federal researchers reported on Thursday.

Just over 20 percent of the adult population smoked in 2008, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1,000 people take up the habit every day.

"Overall smoking prevalence did not change significantly from 2007 to 2008," CDC researchers wrote in the weekly report on death and disease.

"In 2008, an estimated 20.6 percent (46 million) of U.S. adults were current cigarette smokers; of these, 79.8 percent (36.7 million) smoked every day, and 20.2 percent (9.3 million) smoked some days."

Just over 45 percent of current smokers reported they had tried to quit at least once in the past year.

The CDC's Ann Malarcher and colleagues analyzed data from the 2008 National Health Interview Survey of 21,781 adults,

Between 1998 and 2008, the number of smokers fell by 3.5 percent, from 24.1 percent to 20.6 percent, with almost all that decline before 2005.

Smokers tended to have less education, the survey found.

Only 5.7 percent of people advanced graduate degrees smoked while 27.5 percent of people with less than a high school diploma did so.