Casual smokers lifting numbers in NY

The number of adult New Yorkers who smoke, which fell for years under the anti-tobacco mayor, Mike Bloomberg, last year surpassed 1 million for the first time since 2007, according to a story by Jennifer Fermino for the New York Daily News.

According to new data from the city’s health department, 16.1 percent of adults smoked last year, up from a low of 14.0 percent in 2010.

Fermino said the numbers were striking for a city that had led the US in adopting anti-tobacco measures, such as banning smoking in bars, restaurants and parks. The rise in the number of New York smokers during 2013, the last year for which data were available, occurred even as smoking rates fell across the country.

However, Fermino added, the national rate of 18 percent remained higher than the rate in New York.

Health officials blamed the city’s smoking spike on several factors, one of which was the cutting from $13.5 million to $7.1 million of the city’s annual tobacco control budget, which pays for anti-smoking programs and marketing campaigns.

In addition, the city’s anti-tobacco efforts in recent years have not been focusing on what officials describe as the new breed of consumers – casual smokers in their mid-20s to early 40s.

“I think you are seeing a really different smoking population, and that means we need to talk to them,” said Christine Johnson Curtis, a deputy city health commissioner.