Percentage of Ohio high school students who smoke: 40%

Per capita yearly consumption of cigs in 1963:4,435 smokes per person

Per capita yearly consumption in 1998: 2,261 smokes per person

Percentage of smokers in the USA: 25 (I've always questioned/douted this is true-I still say it's more than that)

Average American consumes:1.25 packs per day

Number of states with statewide bans:5

Number of communities with bans:1600

Toledo, Ohio-rank in U.S. metropolitan cigarette consumption: NUMBER ONE

Average state tax on cigs:69.4 cents per pack

Number of states that have raised cigarette taxes over the last two years:31

Number of states with a cig tax of a dollar or more per pack:13

Number of states which use tobacco tax revenue primarily for tobacco control & prevention:3

Ohio's letter grade for tobacco control efforts recied by the CDC and the ALA: F

Fiscal year 2003 tobacco prevention and control spending in Ohio: 27 million

CDC recommended minimum spending in Ohio: Between 61-173 million

Ohio tobacco tax revenue in fiscal year 2003: 193 million

Total Ohio tobacco-generated revenue for fiscal year 2003: 940 million

Amount taken from the state tobacco fund to address the state budget deficit in 2003: 240 million

SOURCES: American Medical News, Centers For Disease Control, American Liars (er, Lung ) Association, Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids

I would love to see this same kind of break down for all 50 states.....particularly those with smoking bans.

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Smoke gnatzies: small minds buzzing in you business - SWAT'EM

Made one minor mistake-that percentage of smokers across the USA should have read 24%. Although I've always douted it-hell, it's 36% just in Lucas County, with most of 'em in Toledo!

For once, I'd like to see them use real numbers. I'm assuming they count per capita as percentage of the total population, instead of percentage of the population who is legally of smoking age. It really helps them show the percentage of smokers as being smaller when they count newborns to 5 year olds. Did they do that in the 50's? Or did they count percentages as those out of adults.

Same thing goes for teenage smoking. It's perfectly legal for 18 and 19 year olds to smoke in most places.

I think they get the percentages of adult and underage smokers from the same places they get the percentages of overweight and obese adults and kids--from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for adults and from the Youth Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for youth.

In other words, they get their stats from SELF reports in phone surveys conducted by state health departments. You can imagine how accurate the figures really are---NOT!