State-Specific Prevalence of Quit Attempts Among Adult Cigarette Smokers — United States, 2011–2017

From 1965 to 2017, the prevalence of cigarette smoking among U.S. adults aged ≥18 years decreased from 42.4% to 14.0%, in part because of increases in smoking cessation (1,2). Increasing smoking cessation can reduce smoking-related disease, death, and health care expenditures (3). Increases in cessation are driven in large part by increases in quit attempts (4). Healthy People 2020 objective 4.1 calls for increasing the proportion of U.S. adult cigarette smokers who made a past-year quit attempt to ≥80% (5). To assess state-specific trends in the prevalence of past-year quit attempts among adult cigarette smokers, CDC analyzed data from the 2011-2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys for all 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), Guam, and Puerto Rico. During 2011-2017, quit attempt prevalence increased in four states (Kansas, Louisiana, Virginia, and West Virginia), declined in two states (New York and Tennessee), and did not significantly change in the remaining 44 states, DC, and two territories. In 2017, the prevalence of past-year quit attempts ranged from 58.6% in Wisconsin to 72.3% in Guam, with a median of 65.4%. In 2017, older smokers were less likely than younger smokers to make a quit attempt in most states. Implementation of comprehensive state tobacco control programs and evidence-based tobacco control interventions, including barrier-free access to cessation treatments, can increase the number of smokers who make quit attempts and succeed in quitting (2,3).