The report analyzes and recommends putting in place a range of government and private-sector plans. Failure to effectively use every intervention strategy at our disposal could mean turning back the clock on the efforts we've made since the 1960s to reduce cigarette smoking. Satcher presented his report here Wednesday at the 11th International Conference on Tobacco OR Health, a weeklong event with 4,500 health experts from 140 countries participating.
Tobacco use is the nation's leading cause of preventable death and disease.
Each year in the U.S., more than one million young people become regular smokers and more than 400,000 adults die from tobacco-related diseases such as heart disease, lung cancer, and emphysema. Since the surgeon general's landmark first report on smoking and health came out in 1964, an estimated 10 million Americans have died from smoking-related diseases. Achieving the smoking reduction goal for 2010 would require a fourfold increase in the quit rate among smokers. Satcher tells WebMD that the higher quit rate is attainable. Our studies show that you can get that just by every physician asking their patients to quit smoking, and we're proposing much more than that.