Cigarette Sales In U.S. Reach Historic 55-Year Low

National Association of Attorneys General, "Cigarette Sales in U.S. Reach Historic 55-year Low," Press Release (March 8, 2006).

This March 2006 announcement from the National Association of Attorneys General hails the success of tobacco regulation in curbing cigarette smoking in the U.S. The report charts a dramatic, 28% drop in U.S. cigarette sales from 1990 to 2005. While there is no directly comparable sales statistic for marijuana, an illegal product, a reasonable facsimile is to compare numbers of people saying they've smoked marijuana during a given year, a statistic available from the federally funded National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In 1990, 18,931,000 Americans age 12 and up said they'd smoked marijuana in the past year. In the 2004 survey, released in September 2005, it had gone up to 25,451,000, a 34% increase.

Free text available at http://www.tompkins-co.org/wellness/tobaccofree/news/naag2006_0308.htm