Scientific Standards for Studies on Modified Risk Tobacco Products

摘要

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States, contributing to approximately 443,000 premature deaths each year nationally (CDC, 2008). Smoking-related disease causes more deaths than alcohol, illicit drug use, homicide, and suicide combined (Mokdad et al., 2004). Another 8.6 million smokers in the United States live with a smoking-attributable illness (CDC, 2009a). In total, tobacco-related mortality amounts to approximately 5.1 million years of potential life lost per year (CDC, 2008). Smoking also imposes enormous costs on the U.S. health care system and economy, with an estimated $193 billion in losses due to health care costs and productivity losses per year (CDC, 2008). The current prevalence of cigarette use is 20.6 percent among adults and 19.5 percent in youth (CDC, 2010, 2011). After substantial declines in adult smoking rates through the 1980s and 1990s, the rate of U.S. adult smokers has remained relatively static from 20.9 percent in 2004 to 20.6 percent in 2009 (CDC, 2010). Between 1997 and 2003, smoking prevalence among high school students declined substantially from 36.4 percent to 21.9 percent; this decline slowed from a 21.9 percent youth smoking rate in 2003 to 19.5 percent in 2009 (CDC, 2011). Of the 46 million adult smokers in the United States, an estimated 70 percent of smokers wish to quit completely, and approximately 45 percent of smokers attempt to quit each year (CDC, 2002, 2009b). However only approximately 6 percent of the smokers who attempt to quit are successful for one month or more (HHS, 2000).