According to a report released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the decline rate of smoker students in the United States is not as fast as it was expected to be, which led to the country’s failure to keep up with its plan designed to decrease smoking among high school students by 16% in 2010.

Federal Officials reported that statistics of smoker students revealed that the decline in the percentage of smokers is slower than before. The decline percentage was 27.5% in 1991 then 36.4% in 1997. This promising result did not last long, because in 2003 the decline percentage became 21.9%, and a slowest decline percentage was recorder in 2009 of 19.5%.

CDC Director, Dr. Thomas Frieden said, “Although four of five don't smoke, it's discouraging to see that current smoking did not continue to decline more rapidly among youth. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in this country and nine out of 10 adults started smoking in their teens or earlier”.

The death rates of teenagers dying from the tobacco-smoking habit reached more than one third of high school students and it keeps escalating.

Experts are worried that the attention is more and more shifted away from funding programmes against tobacco, because of the newly released campaign against obesity.