No Tobacco Day is coming up on May 3. Since 1987, the World Health Organization has used World No Tobacco Day to campaign against the harmful tactics of the tobacco industry, and to educate people around the world on the negative health impacts of smoking.
As a way of observing World No Tobacco Day, BetOhio.com – your source for the best Ohio sports betting sites - decided to compare the percentage of smokers in the Buckeye State – to other states.
Using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2021 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (CDC – 2021 BRFSS Survey Data and Documentation), we ranked the states according to the percentage of adults who reported “smoking at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and currently smoke daily or some days.” You can't place bets on states with the most smokers at Tipico Ohio Sportsbook, but the information is interesting nevertheless.
Here are the results, from the state with the lowest percentage of smokers to the highest:
The CDC data is clear: Ohio has a serious smoking problem.
Ohio ranked 43rd out of the 49 states in the rankings. (Florida did not have enough data collected in 2021 to be part of the numbers.)
Nearly one out of every five people in the state smoke cigarettes. But while the number of cigarette smoking adults has remained steady over the past 10 years, the amount of high school students who smoke has dropped dramatically.
A survey from 2011 showed that 21.1% of high schoolers were smokers. That number plummeted to 4.9% in 2019. Unfortunately, this time period also coincided with a meteoric rise in the rate of e-cigarette use among teens. In 2019, an estimated 29.8% of high school students vaped regularly, making it the most commonly used drug by teenagers in Ohio.
While consider the negative health effects of e-cigarettes to be less severe than traditional cigarette smoke, research suggests vaping causes elevated blood pressure and heart rate, as well as long term conditions such as cancer and damage to the reproductive system. Ultimately, we still don’t know the full impact vape use has on our long-term health.
What is known, however, is that tobacco use accounts for more than $6.5 billion dollars in health care costs annually in Ohio, according to Tobacco Free Kids.
Even worse, that same site reports that 33.8% of cancer deaths in Ohio can be attributed directly to smoking.
Each year, health organizations report that more than 20,000 Ohioans die of cancer.
If No Tobacco Day has you questioning your relationship to tobacco, or perhaps you’ve tried to give it up in the past and failed, Ohioans can call 1-800-QUIT-NOW to speak with a designated “quit specialist.”
Author
Jeff Parker is an Entertainment Writer for BetOhio.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with an actual Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
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