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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's youth smoking rate has dropped more than 50 percent since 1999, a new state Department of Health report shows.
Health officials said the 5.9 percent rate is the lowest recorded level. Smoking rates have been cut in half in nearly all local health districts in the state over the past 13 years, according to the annual Tobacco Prevention and Control in Utah report, issued last week.
The report also shows that some 12,000 Utahns — adults, teens and pregnant women — used state-sponsored cessation programs in fiscal year 2012.
The state's adult smoking rate, 11.3 percent, is the lowest in nation.
"But our work is far from finished as there are still 220,000 adult smokers in Utah and four out of five of them want to quit. That's where we come in," said Amy Oliver, marketing manager of the state's Tobacco Prevention and Control Program.
As smoking rates have dropped, state and local health officials have shifted their attention to the tobacco industry's push to market to youth new products such as dissolvable tobacco, hookahs and electronic cigarettes.
Ninety percent of adult smokers take up the habit before age 18, which suggests an ongoing need for prevention efforts, Oliver said. Once nonsmoking youth hit their 20s, they are far less likely to succumb to pressure to smoke.
Targeted youth education efforts are under way in 21 school districts, which serve 220,000 students.
