Cigarette smoking rate at 80-year low: Gallup

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 11 percent of U.S. adults said they have smoked cigarettes in the past week, which matches the historic low smoking rate measured in 2022. This is also just less than 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 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 a “major reason” for the decline is the drop in smoking cigarettes among young adults. An average of 6 percent of adults younger than 30 said they had smoked cigarettes in the past three years, according to an aggregate of Gallup’s polling data from 2022-24.

Although young adults are less likely to report cigarette smoking, they are more likely than older adults to report electronic cigarette usage. Between 2022-24, about 18 percent of adults younger than 30 said they have smoked e-cigarettes or used vapes in the past week.

Only 1 percent of those older than 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 4 percentage points.