Study: Number of heavy smokers plummeted since ‘60s

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Updated: March 16, 2011 9:12AM

The rate of “pack-a-day” or more smokers in the United States has fallen sharply since 1965, particularly in California, which has led the nation in its anti-smoking efforts, a new study shows.

Earlier research has already shown that a smaller percentage of Americans smoke now than in previous decades. The new study, published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to indicate that high-intensity smoking is also less common, its authors said.

In the mid-1960s, 56 percent of all smokers in the United States had 20 or more cigarettes a day. After the Office of the Surgeon General issued the first report linking smoking and cancer in 1964, the ranks of heavy smokers tumbled over the next four decades, researchers from the University of California, San Diego found.

By 2007, 23 percent of California smokers and 40 percent of smokers in the rest of the United States smoked a pack-a-day or more.

But there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in less-intense smoking since 1965, suggesting that the 40-year decline in heavy smoking wasn’t fueled solely by high-intensity smokers cutting back, said lead study author John P. Pierce, of UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center.

“The major decline is in the young people never [becoming smokers] in the first place. It’s much easier to quit when you don’t have to,” Pierce said, adding that changing social norms about smoking have played a role in the trend.

California, in particular, has long been at the forefront of efforts to curb smoking — from being one of the first states to aggressively raise its cigarette tax to adopting the nation’s first anti-smoking ordinances in the workplace. The state also uses cigarette tax revenue to fund its tobacco control program.

The study findings are based on survey responses from more than 130,000 Californians and 1.7 million people from the rest of the country taken between 1965 and 2007.

As smoking patterns in the United States have changed, rates of lung cancer smoking deaths have also dropped, though lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women.