Smoking Increases – It’s Cool Again

In addition to acknowledging its underestimated of H1N1 deaths earlier today, the CDC also acknowledged that adult smoking rates have increased for the first time in decades. Adult smokers are now back over the critical 20% threshold.

I all but predicted this in a recent posting Politics and the Failure of Public Health. In that posting I noted that the CDC has all but given up on solving the problems of chronic disease and we know that smoking is at the root of many of those conditions – heart disease, cancer, obesity and a host of others.

In that posting, I also questioned whether the CDC’s lack of efforts in reducing smoking have something to do with our Smoker in Chief – President Barack Obama. Obama has made smoking cool again. There’s a swagger to being a smoker now that hasn’t existed in many years. The CDC’s head Dr. Thomas R. Frieden has made a crusade against smoking – a mission he seems to have promptly abandoned once he received his appointment from President Obama.

Chronic disease is a critical health issue. This is an area calling out for CDC leadership – and leadership from Dr. Thomas Frieden. Hopefully Dr. Frieden and the CDC will take today’s news to heart and begin focusing on fighting chronic disease in America.

Reference: Wall Street Journal