Cigarette smoking in 99 metropolitan areas--United States, 2000

Abstract

Geographic variation in the prevalence of cigarette smoking contributes to differences in the mortality patterns of smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, and coronary heart disease. National and state-specific data on cigarette smoking are available but may be limited in their usefulness in guiding local or county smoking-related health interventions. CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is an annual, state-based survey that includes questions about tobacco use and has sufficiently large samples to permit analyses of risk factor data for many metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). This report summarizes estimates of smoking behavior for the 99 MSAs with > or = 300 respondents (maximum: 7,264) in the 2000 BRFSS. The prevalence of smoking among the 99 MSAs ranged from 13.0% to 31.2% (median: 22.7%), and the percentage of daily smokers who quit for > or = 1 day ranged from 33.0% to 62.2% (median: 50.3%). The findings in this report indicate that BRFSS can provide baseline data for monitoring local programs and a benchmark for comparing data from local surveys.