Can tobacco use be eliminated within 40 years?
It will take a lot of hard work, but Dr. Michael Fiore is convinced we can win the war on tobacco.
"We predict that tobacco use will actually be eliminated in the United States by the year 2047, but we also outline ways that we can accelerate progress so that we actually achieve that goal even sooner."
Fiore is Director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention . He and Associate Director, Dr. Timothy Baker released article in the American Journal of Public Health, in which he says tobacco-use rates in America have fallen over the last 50 years from more than 43 percent in the 1960s to less than 20 percent today. Fiore says over the last couple of decades, more than 10-million Americans have been killed by smoking.
"Half of all people who smoke today, if they don't successfully quit, will be killed prematurely by a disease directly caused by smoking."
Fiore explains eliminating the use of tobacco depends on increasing federal and state taxes, enacting a nationwide smoking ban, cutting out nicotine, media campaigns to point out the dangers of cigarettes, ban tobacco promotion, increase cessation counseling, and prevent kids from starting in the first place.