for quitting," he said. "If you go from smoking 20 cigarettes to 10 you aren't cutting your risk in half." The percentage of Americans who continue to smoke is higher than the 12 percent goal stated in Healthy People 2020, a set of nationwide health goals established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "If you smoke, you are losing over a decade of life on average," McAfee said. Stopping smoking not only increases life expectancy, "it's also increasing your quality of your life. For every smoker who dies there are 20 more smokers still alive with a serious chronic condition, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease or ... cancer." Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, said that "while we have made steps forward in reducing the number of adults in the U.S. who smoke cigarettes, we are not doing what we need to do [to get] the most vulnerable populations to quit, and we are not doing what we need to do to make sure people aren't switching to other tobacco products."