Forty-eight million Americans smoked in 1997 which is equivalent to about twenty-five percent of the nation’s adult population, according to a U.S. government survey released in November, 1999 (Cooper n.p.). According to Michael Ericksen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health, the smoking rate among young adults ages 18-24 rose about four percent because of the increase in teen smoking seen over the next ten years. He said, “As these teenagers have grown and aged and become young adults, they’ve brought with them their addiction” (Cooper n.p.).