The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) includes use of tobacco products, including cigarettes, chewing tobacco, snuff, cigars, and pipe tobacco. Cigarette use is defined as smoking tobacco, whereas, chewing tobacco and snuff are combined as smokeless tobacco.
69.7 million Americans aged 12 or older were current users of a tobacco product in 2009 according to the survey. 58.7 million persons were current cigarette smokers, 13.3 million smoked cigars, 8.6 million used smokeless tobacco and 2.1 million smoked tobacco in pipes. The rate of current use of any tobacco product among persons aged 12 or older remained steady from 2008 to 2009.
Adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest rate of current use of a tobacco products in 2009 and the 35.8 percent of adults used cigarettes, 11.4 percent used cigars, 6.1 percent used smokeless tobacco, and 1.7 percent used pipe tobacco.
Among persons aged 12 or older, males are higher than the females who used tobacco. Males also had higher rates of past month use than females of each specific tobacco product which includes cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco and pipe tobacco. Among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of current cigarette smoking in 2009 was slightly higher for males than for females.
In 2009, current cigarette smoking was more common among unemployed adults aged 18 or older than among adults who were working full time or part time. Among adults aged 18 or older, current cigarette use in 2009 was reported by 35.4 percent of those who had not completed high school, 30.0 percent of high school graduates who did not attend college, 25.4 percent of persons with some college, and 13.1 percent of college graduates.