MANHATTAN — The Bloomberg administration’s intensive efforts to snuff out cigarettes have cut the city’s adult smoking rate to an all-time low, health officials say.
The number of smokers has dropped by 35 percent since 2002, when the mayor began his cigarette crackdown, with 450,000 fewer smokers lighting up around the five boroughs, a statement from the mayor’s office announced Thursday morning.
The proportion of New Yorkers who smoke cigarettes is now down to 14 percent, from 22 percent in 2002, according to the statement.
“Smoking is the leading cause of preventable, premature death in New York City and the nation today and we’re proud that a record number of New Yorkers are saving their own lives by quitting,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in the statement. “This decrease will prevent 50,000 premature deaths by the year 2052.”
The city’s heralded anti-smoking efforts kicked off in 2002, with the passage of a controversial measure that banned smoking in restaurants and bars — a law that was expanded to include city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas earlier this year.
The Health Department has also worked to reduce smoking through graphic public health ads, nicotine patch giveaways and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to force stores that sell tobacco products to post pictures of diseased lungs wherever cigarettes are sold.
While the hard-hitting initiatives have angered some smokers, Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said the city’s efforts were to thank for the massive drop in cigarette smokers.
“We are making historic progress against our city’s biggest killer,” Farley said in the statement. “This progress didn’t just happen. It is the result of deliberate steps taken by the mayor and the city council since 2002.”
The decrease has been especially dramatic in Union Square and Lower Manhattan; Central Harlem and Morningside Heights; and Chelsea and Greenwich Village, all of which have experienced declines of 50 percent or more since 2002, according to data released by the mayor’s office.
Smoking among students in the city’s public high schools has also been slashed in half during the past eight years, dropping from 18 percent to 7 percent, the statement noted.
