Tobacco.org

• For tobacco, a real drag  

Dr. Jeffrey Kulhmann recommended that the president, who has acknowledged smoking the occasional cigarette, stick with nicotine patches. In fact, some smokers have been able to cut back or kick the habit with the help of cessation programs. But the most powerful antismoking force in America is simple economics. Steep tax increases and a terrible economy probably reduced the number of cigarettes smoked in the United States last year by about 10 percent, one of the steepest annual declines in decades.

Cigarette sales have been declining for many years. But that slide has been slow and steady, reliably cutting consumption by about 2 percent a year. By comparison, the sales decline last year was off the charts.

"Both taxes and diminished income are playing a big role in declining sales of tobacco, and the nation is going to be healthier for it,'' says Gregory Connolly, director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health. . . .

Altria's Philip Morris USA unit, which sells brands including Marlboro, Parliament, and Virginia Slims, recorded a 10.5 percent decrease in 2009 domestic cigarette shipments. The decline was even steeper in the last three months of the year, when US cigarette sales at Philip Morris USA slumped by 12 percent. . . .

Researchers such as Connolly say some cigarette smokers don't quit so much as switch to other products, including cigars and smokeless tobacco.

But most of the huge cigarette sales decline of 2009 is very real. Taxes, and basic economics, do more than anything else to make smokers quit.

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