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Smoking out the pessimism on changing health habits: adult smoking is down 2/3 !!

Only 14% of US adults smoke now--compared to 42% just over 50 years ago.

That's a 2/3 decline. Yet many of us think that we can't change Americans' unhealthy activity & nutrition habits.

Why has smoking gone down so dramatically, while obesity & diabetes keep going up?  Well, we actually seriously tried, as a society & a political system, to reduce smoking.  We have not seriously tried to reverse obesity & diabetes.

How did we reduce smoking so much?  Here is my grading of how poorly we are doing, at using strategies that worked against smoking--to fight inactivity & unhealthy nutrition:

- Broad & profound awareness of seriousness of problem  (D)
- Strong physical & health education programs in schools  (D)
- Hard-hitting, pervasive public information campaigns  (F)
- Very strong government health warnings  (D)
- Large insurance premium discounts for healthy behavior  (D)
- Cost-effective behavior cessation/adoption products/programs  (D)
- Restrictions on unhealthy product marketing/promotion (kids, adults)*  (F)
- Slash public subsidies for unhealthy products**  (F)

When are we going to seriously address inactivity & unhealthy nutrition?  Many of us are working on this, and a tipping point for change is approaching...

[Notes:  
*For example, just as we have banned cigarette advertising directed at children & banned junk food vending machines in schools, we could ban advertising of food & beverage products harmful to children during children’s media programming.   
**Increasingly higher cigarette taxes have played a critical role in reducing smoking.  State & federal governments & taxpayers subsidize unhealthy food & beverage products, by not charging the product-sellers the health costs paid by governments & taxpayers, due to chronic diseases arising to a significant extent from those unhealthy products.]

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