Project to End Smoking

The Project to End Smoking’s mission is to accelerate the end of cigarette smoking in the United States through science-based, people-centered, and risk-proportionate nicotine policies that protect youth and support adult smoking cessation.

Executive Summary

The Project to End Smoking is designed to accelerate the decline in cigarette smoking in the United States. We believe it is possible to both protect youth from nicotine product use and dramatically accelerate adult smoking cessation. Achieving this requires better aligning public health policy with scientific evidence on nicotine risk and smoking cessation.

The Project to End Smoking advances people-centered, risk-proportionate policy strategies that align smoking cessation goals with real-world nicotine use patterns, particularly among populations for whom existing smoking cessation approaches have fallen short.

Guiding Principles

The Project to End Smoking is guided by the following:

  1. We recognize that cigarettes are uniquely lethal and that cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Ending cigarette use in the United States would deliver sweeping public health gains.
  2. We are deeply concerned for millions of Americans who want to quit smoking but have been unable to do so using traditional cessation approaches alone. Evidence-based harm reduction approaches can be incorporated into public health policy to better support these individuals. 
  3. We believe in risk-proportionate regulation of nicotine products and that tobacco control policies should align with the continuum of risk across nicotine products. 
  4. We believe public health policy can simultaneously protect youth from nicotine use while dramatically accelerating adult smoking cessation.

Public Health Objectives

The Project to End Smoking maintains the following national smoking reduction targets are achievable under a policy framework that prioritizes smoking cessation, youth prevention and risk-proportionate regulation:

  • By 2030, the United States will exceed its Healthy People 2030 objective by achieving an overall adult cigarette smoking prevalence below 6.1%. 
  • By 2035, overall adult cigarette smoking prevalence in the U.S. will be 4% or less.  
  • By 2040, overall adult cigarette smoking prevalence in the U.S. will be 1% or less.