Newly emboldened health officials predicting US smoking endgame

Health officials have begun to predict the end of cigarette smoking in the U.S., according to an Associated Press story.

They have long wished for a cigarette-free country but previously have shied away from predicting that smoking rates would fall to near zero by any particular year.

But because of what AP referred to as “a confluence of changes,” they now talk about the adult smoking rate dropping to 10 percent during the next decade and to 5 percent or lower by 2050.

Acting U.S. Surgeon General Boris Lushniak last month released a 980-page report on smoking that pushed for stepped-up tobacco-control measures.

His news conference was apparently an unusually animated showing of anti-smoking bravado, with Lushniak nearly yelling, repeatedly, “Enough is enough!”

“I can’t accept that we’re just allowing these numbers to trickle down,” he said, in a recent interview with AP. “We believe we have the public health tools to get us to the zero level.”

The full story, including details of the changes that have taken place since 1984 when then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called for a smoke-free society by 2000, is at http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/10/experts-predict-end-smoking-in-america/.