About two-thirds of smokers want to quit. In the United States, 67.7% of the 28.8 million adults who smoked in 2022 said they wanted to stop, according to CDC data from the National Health Interview Survey. Globally, the number is similar: roughly 60% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users have expressed an intention to quit.
Wanting to Quit vs. Actually Quitting
The gap between wanting to quit and succeeding is enormous. While 67.7% of U.S. adult smokers said they wanted to quit in 2022, only 53.3% actually made an attempt in the past year. And of those who tried, the results were discouraging: just 8.8% successfully quit. Other estimates put annual success rates even lower, around 7.5%.
Most unassisted quit attempts end in relapse within eight days. That’s not a failure of willpower so much as a reflection of how powerfully nicotine reshapes the brain’s reward system. The desire to quit is genuine for most smokers, but desire alone rarely translates into lasting change without support.
This Number Has Barely Changed in 20 Years
You might expect the desire to quit to have climbed over time as public awareness of smoking’s harms has grown. It hasn’t. National data showed 70.0% of adult smokers wanted to quit in 2000 and 68.0% in 2015, a statistically insignificant change. The 2022 figure of 67.7% fits right in that same range.
Among young people, the trend actually went the wrong direction. The percentage of high school seniors who were current smokers and wanted to stop “now” dropped from 31.0% in 2000-2004 to 16.5% in 2015-2017. This likely reflects that the remaining teen smokers are a smaller, harder-to-reach group as overall youth smoking rates have plummeted.
Why Smokers Want to Quit
Health concerns drive about half of all quit attempts. A large population study in England tracking motivations from 2018 to 2023 found that 52% of people cited health as the reason behind their most recent quit attempt. Within that category, concern about future health problems (35.5%) outweighed existing health problems at the time (19%).
Cost was the second most common motivator at 22.7%, followed by social pressure from family, friends, or children at 19%. Advice from a doctor or other health professional prompted 11.6% of attempts. These categories overlap, of course. Many smokers are pushed by a combination of worrying about their lungs, watching cigarette prices climb, and hearing their kids ask them to stop.
What Keeps Smokers From Acting
If nearly 7 in 10 smokers want to quit, why don’t more of them succeed? The barriers are both psychological and practical. Fear is a major factor: fear of failing again after previous attempts, fear of losing something that feels like a coping tool, and fear of the emotional fallout of withdrawal. Smokers who have tried and relapsed multiple times often carry a sense of defeat that makes the next attempt feel pointless before it starts.
Mental health conditions complicate things further. Depression and anxiety can make quitting harder because nicotine acts as a short-term mood regulator. Clinicians who work with smokers note that when psychiatric conditions are present, those often need to be addressed before cessation has a realistic chance of working.
Environmental triggers matter too. Being surrounded by other smokers, whether at home, at work, or in a social circle, makes it significantly harder to stay quit. There’s also a mindset distinction that counselors emphasize: people who quit because they feel pressured by others (“I shouldn’t smoke”) tend to fare worse than those who internalize the decision (“I don’t need to smoke”).
How Price Increases Affect the Desire to Quit
Raising cigarette prices through taxation is one of the most effective tools for pushing smokers toward quit attempts. Among heavy and long-term smokers, higher prices had a stronger association with making a quit attempt than either smoke-free laws or media campaigns. Price increases don’t necessarily help people stay quit for good, but they do get more smokers to try.
The effect is strongest among young people, young adults, and people with lower incomes. For the general population, the impact is more modest, but the overall consensus in tobacco control is clear: higher prices reduce both the number of people who smoke and the number of cigarettes each smoker consumes.
How the U.S. Compares Globally
The U.S. figure of 67.7% is relatively high by global standards, but it’s not universal. China, home to the world’s largest population of smokers, presents a stark contrast: only 16.2% of Chinese smokers expressed a desire to quit in a 2018 survey. Cultural norms around smoking, weaker tobacco control policies, and less access to cessation support all contribute to lower quit interest in some countries.
Globally, while 60% of tobacco users say they want to quit, only 30% have access to the kind of comprehensive cessation services that improve their odds. The gap between intention and infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges in global tobacco control.
E-Cigarette Users Show Higher Quit Interest
People who use both traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes tend to report a stronger desire to quit smoking than those who only smoke cigarettes. In one cohort study, dual users rated their interest in quitting at 7.4 out of 10 on average, compared to 6.3 for cigarette-only smokers. Dual users also had greater odds of quitting at the six-month mark. Over longer periods, though, their abstinence rates looked similar to those of exclusive cigarette smokers, suggesting that initial motivation didn’t translate into a lasting advantage.