Nicotine Dependence In The U.S.

According to a recently-released study by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, tobacco is used more widely than illicit drugs in the U.S., and it is implicated in more deaths each year than alcohol and illicit drugs combined.

In 2006, 72.9 million Americans aged 12 or older (29.6 percent of the population) were current (i.e., past-month) users of tobacco, and 84.5 percent of these users smoked cigarettes. Nicotine dependence, which is measured for cigarette users, has been found to be associated with increased risk of alcohol and illicit drug use and of mental disorders.

The following are brief findings found in the report:

• Among past-month cigarette smokers aged 12 or older, 57.7 percent met the criteria for past-month nicotine dependence.
• Persons aged 12 or older who were dependent on nicotine in the past month were more likely than those who were not nicotine dependent to have engaged in alcohol use (61.7 vs. 49.1 percent), binge alcohol use (40.1 vs. 20.1 percent), and heavy alcohol use (14.9 vs. 5.5 percent) in the past month.
• Persons aged 18 or older who were nicotine dependent in the past month were more than twice as likely as their counterparts who were not dependent on nicotine to have experienced serious psychological distress in the past year (21.2 vs. 9.4 percent).

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Related Links

Tobacco Documents Online Search over 4 million tobacco industry documents. As part of the Master Settlement Agreement between the States and the tobacco companies, the industry was required to make the documents used during the trials avialable. This site allows searching across all the companies, access to high-quality images, OCR, and the ability to collect and annotate documents.

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