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The United States surgeon general warned on Thursday that despite the well-known lethal dangers of cigarettes, too many smokers are not routinely advised by their doctors to quit. In a new report, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, urged smokers to use a range of cessation methods that have been proven effective — and cautioned that e-cigarettes have not. “Forty percent of smokers don’t get advised to quit,” Dr. Adams said in an interview. “That was a shocking statistic to me, and it’s a little embarrassing as a health professional.” (Kaplan, 1/23)

Stopping smoking at any age could add a decade to your life, but don't bother quitting with e-cigarettes — there's not enough evidence it works, the Surgeon General says. In an interview before the release of the first Surgeon General report on smoking cessation in 30 years, Dr. Jerome Adams urged those as old as 85 to quit smoking and added fuel to the burning debate over the benefits and risks of vaping, which has been billed as a smoking alternative but also has led millions of young people to start using nicotine. (O'Donnell, 1/23)

Behavioral counseling and Food and Drug Administration-approved cessation medications have proven to improve patients' success at quitting smoking. But Adams said considerable disparities exist that make it more difficult for more vulnerable groups to get the kind of support they need. "It's easy for me, who lives in the suburbs, to think that no one smokes anymore — when I look around, I don't see anyone smoking, and we're at historically low numbers," Adams said. "But the fact is many groups have been left behind by the progress we've made over the last several decades." (Johnson, 1/23)

The new report also notes that "there is presently inadequate evidence to conclude that e-cigarettes, in general, increase smoking cessation" and more research is needed in that area."E-cigarettes are a continually changing and diverse group of products that are used in a variety of ways. Therefore it is difficult to make generalizations about their effectiveness for cessation based on studies of a particular e-cigarette," Adams said. (Howard, 1/23)