U.S. Surgeon General outlines ways to address disparities among smokers, including many who are rural Americans

Secondhand smoke harms people who don't smoke.
 (Adobe Stock photo)

Over the past decade, the rate of U.S. adults and teens who smoke has hit its lowest level since 1965, but "disparities remain among the 36 million adults and 760,000 kids who smoke," reports Ken Alltucker of USA Today. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report that outlined identifiers for those who continue to smoke, which are often the same descriptors used to depict American rural populations: Poorer, less educated, Native American, and lacking access to medical care.

Native Americans, specifically those in Alaska, often live in some of the most remote pockets of the country, where medical access isn't readily available and many residents live in poverty. Alltucker writes, "Smoking is more common among American Indian and Alaska Native people than other racial and ethnic groups. . . . People living in poverty are more than twice as likely to smoke than those who earn non-poverty wages."

Rural populations tend to be heavier smokers than their urban counterparts, and the more rural residents smoke, the unhealthier their broader community becomes. Alltucker explains, "Because cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke kill nearly half a million people each year nationwide, Murthy said an accelerated effort is needed to limit disparities in smoking rates and reduce secondhand smoke."

The report also calls for "limiting the nicotine in cigarettes and other tobacco products to 'minimally addictive or nonaddictive levels,'" Alltucker reports. "Such a move could prevent more than 33 million people from starting to smoke. . ." This change could have a positive effect in rural populations where "kids are also more likely to start smoking at a much younger age and smoke daily, making addiction more severe and smoking harder to quit," the American Lung Association reports.

The Surgeon General's report "cited 2023 research that projected a nationwide ban on the sale and marketing of menthol cigarettes would prevent up to 654,000 deaths in the next four decades," Alltucker reports. But controlling the flow of cigarettes isn't going to happen overnight, and in the meantime, rural access to medical education and smoking cessation programs is needed.

Murthy told USA Today, "What's at stake are the lives of our kids and adults across America. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the country − 490,000 lives we lose every year to tobacco-related disease. Despite all the progress we've made, that remains the truth today."