Cleveland Smoking Rates Have Dropped by Nearly 50% Over Past Ten Years, Health Department Finds

An anti-smoking signs from the FDA at a gas station on East 55th St., Credit: Mark Oprea

According to results from a new Cleveland Health Survey, conducted by the Department of Public Health, there’s been a 45% drop in Cleveland’s smoking rates over the past decade.

That’s welcome news, as the city has held the distinction of having one of the highest per capita smoking rates among big cities in recent years.

But whereas 40% of Clevelanders smoked a decade ago, that number is now closer to 25%, CDPH officials said in a Zoom press conference on Tuesday.

Those findings, a part of a Cleveland Health Survey that attracted 1,497 respondents, were tucked in the department’s State of Tobacco policy brief. One with a bit of a catch: While cigs went down, cigar and vaping use jumped by about 40 percent.

“On the plus side, tobacco use rates are down—yay!” Stephanie Pike Moore, a researcher at the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods, said in the call. “Cleveland still has some of the highest rates in the country. But a decline is what we want to see.”

Tobacco use has been hot on Director Dave Margolius’s to-do list while at the helm of the city’s health department.

There have been incremental wins. For instance, after months of advocacy work, Cleveland City Council passed a suite of new laws aimed to curtail the number of smoke shops popping up around the city, and fine them if they fail any health inspections or sell to those under 21.

Margolius has also been a watchdog on the flavored vape front, pushing for legislation that would make such vapes harder to get in the hands of teenagers.

Which might be more complicated with the data implication: about 8 percent of Clevelanders regularly use vapes now, compared to 5.5 percent ten years ago.

“But far more people have quit nicotine products,” Margolius argued, “than switched to different types of nicotine products.”

From November to January, CDPH mailed out hundreds of thousands of postcards to Clevelanders in all 34 neighborhoods of the city. 1,497 people responded to 90 questions, from how often they smoke to how often they’re depressed.

While we get our prostates checked more often and have slightly more employment than your average American, Cleveland is still quite lagging behind some national health thresholds.

For starters, the survey found, we have higher obesity rates (39%), diabetes rates (16%) and high blood pressure (46%). We’re depressed more often (37%), feel less social (58%) and are lonelier and depressed.

We’re also seeking stable sources of food more often (30%), receiving SNAP (33%), own fewer homes, need help paying rent and utilities, and have a tougher time securing rides to work (18%), or just keeping constant work altogether (17%).

Margolius said he’s eager to present the results of the Cleveland Health Survey to City Council in hopes that it can somehow influence new laws related to bettering the city’s overall well-being.

And keep the metrics on that well-being more updated than in the past. Margolius said he wants the next round of survey data by 2028 or 2030.

“Not another ten years,” he said.