Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. Although the percentage of all U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes has declined substantially since the mid-1960s, marked disparities persist, and declines have not been consistent across population groups. Studies have shown that cigarette smoking is as common, and sometimes more so, among adults with a history of epilepsy compared with those without a history of epilepsy, but reasons for this are unclear (CDC:2020).
Estimates of current smoking prevalence among adults with epilepsy showed that 1.1% of U.S. adults surveyed had active epilepsy and 0.7% had inactive epilepsy. Current cigarette smoking prevalence was 24.9% for adults with active epilepsy, 25.9% for adults with inactive epilepsy, and 16.6% for adults without epilepsy.