High School Students Who Tried to Quit Smoking Cigarettes: United States, 2007

In the United States, cigarette use is the leading cause of preventable death, and most adult smokers started before the age of 18 years. Nicotine dependence maintains tobacco use and makes quitting difficult. Despite their relatively short smoking histories, many adolescents who smoke are nicotine dependent, and such dependence can lead to daily smoking. To examine the extent to which high school students had tried to quit smoking cigarettes, CDC analyzed data from the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), a nationally representative survey of students in grades 9-12 in the United States. This report describes the results of that analysis, which found that 60.9 percent of students who ever smoked cigarettes daily tried to quit smoking cigarettes, and 12.2 percent were successful. These findings indicate that comprehensive tobacco control programs need to continue to implement community-based interventions that prevent initiation and increase cessation and increase the use of evidence-based cessation strategies for youths. YRBS measures the prevalence of health risk behaviors among high school students through biennial national, state, and local surveys. The national YRBS uses a three-stage cluster sample design to obtain cross-sectional data representative of public- and private-school students in grades 9-12 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Students complete school-based, anonymous, self-administered questionnaires that examine the prevalence of health risk behaviors, including tobacco use. In 2007, the school response rate was 81 percent, the student response rate was 84 percent, the overall response rate was 68 percent, and 14,041 students completed a usable questionnaire. The following two behaviors were examined: (1) ever smoked cigarettes daily and tried to quit smoking cigarettes; and (2) ever smoked cigarettes daily, tried to quit smoking cigarettes, and were successful. Race/ethnicity data are presented for non-Hispanic black, non-Hispanic white, and Hispanic students; the numbers of students from other racial/ethnic groups were too small for meaningful analysis. Data were weighted to provide national estimates. Statistical software that takes into account the complex sampling design was used to calculate prevalence estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals and to conduct t-tests for subgroup comparisons (p less than 0.05). (Contains 1 table.)