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State Health Compare

Percent of high school students who have smoked at least one cigarette in the past 30 days

Measure Overview

Smoking rates among high schoolers have declined precipitously since the mid-1990s, thanks in large part to widespread, effective public health campaigns advocating against tobacco use. Despite this progress, millions of high school students continue to smoke. Smoking causes a number of diseases and adverse health effects such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and increases the risk of tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and immune system problems. Ongoing surveillance of high school smoking rates is a critical step in identifying youth populations that are more prone to start smoking and can help inform efforts to end the smoking epidemic in the United States.

State Health Compare provides state-level rates of high school students who smoke cigarettes based on findings from the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBSS). Data are available on a biennial basis beginning in 2011.

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BRFSS Spotlight Series: Adult Smoking and E-Cigarette Use in the United States (Infographic)

In the first part of our BRFSS spotlight series, we analyzed newly available 2018 data for an existing measure, Adult Smoking, and a more complete set of existing data from 2017 (as data for 2018 was not available in a majority of states) for a brand new measure, Adult E-Cigarette Use.