The share of Americans who report smoking cigarettes is back at a record low this year, according to new polling from Gallup.
The Gallup survey found that 11 percent of U.S. adults said that they have smoked cigarettes in the past week, which matches the historic low smoking rate measured in 2022. This is also just under the 12 percent of U.S. adults who reported smoking cigarettes in 2023, Gallup noted.
When Gallup first polled U.S. adults about their cigarette smoking habits in 1944, 41 percent of adults said they had smoked. The polling firm noted that the 2024 smoking rate is about half of what it was in 2014, and one-third of what it was in the late 1980s.
Gallup said that a “major reason” for the decline is the drop in smoking cigarettes among young adults. An average 6 percent of adults under the age of 30 said they had smoked cigarettes in over the past three years, according to an aggregate of Gallup’s polling data from 2022-2024.
While young adults are less likely to report cigarette smoking, they are more likely than older adults to report e-cigarette usage. Between 2022-2024, about 18 percent of adults under the age of 30 said they have smoked e-cigarettes or used vapes in the past week.
Just 1 percent of those over the age of 65 said they used e-cigarettes or vaped, while 9 percent said they smoked cigarettes.
Most Americans labeled cigarettes and e-cigarettes as “very harmful,” according to the poll. Nearly 80 percent said cigarettes are “very harmful,” while 57 percent said the same about e-cigarettes.
The results are based on Gallup’s Consumption Habits poll, which was conducted July 1-21 among 1,010 adults. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
