The Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC-OSH) works on a range of issues related to tobacco use, including preventing young people from starting to smoke; helping smokers quit; identifying and eliminating disparities in tobacco use among different population groups; and eliminating exposure to secondhand smoke.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and our public health partners work to ensure that the Administration and Congress provide adequate funding for these important initiatives.

CDC-OSH provides significant technical assistance to states that are using their own funds, primarily from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, to implement tobacco prevention and cessation programs and also provides small, yet essential, amounts of federal funding for such programs. (For more information about state funding of tobacco prevention programs, please see our Annual Report on this topic.)

To help states implement effective programs, CDC-OSH has published information such as Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs and State Tobacco Control Highlights. These and other CDC-OSH publications recommend strategies and state-specific funding levels for implementing effective prevention programs. The office also serves as a clearinghouse and resource center for state advertising to reduce tobacco use.

CDC-OSH is also heavily involved with cessation research and programs to help smokers who want to quit. It is working to establish a national network of smoking cessation quitlines and is helping to expand current state tobacco cessation programs that work.

CDC-OSH also maintains comprehensive information on smoking and health and supports ongoing research on tobacco-related issues.

Appropriations for the Office on Smoking and Health at CDC fall under the jurisdiction of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations subcommittees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.