By Armando Duke

(AXcess News) Houston - The smoking rate among U.S. adults had been falling steadily since the 1960s but stalled by 2004 with some 20% of adults still smoking.  In 2009, 21% of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes while alarmingly, 20 of% of teens also smoked.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that "The burden of cigarette smoking continues to be high, particularly in certain groups in the U.S.  Namely, 24% of U.S. adults that smoked where men while 18% where women.  In all, 46 million Americans continued to smoke tobacco in 2009.

Still, the battle to educate the public on the hazards of smoking has won over a large crowd, compared to 1965 when more than 40% of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes.

Better than one-third of Americans who live below the poverty level smoked cigarettes, the CDC said.  And of minority groups, nearly 30% of adults of mixed races and 23% of American Indian/Alaska Native adults smoke cigarettes.

Still, health organizations aren't giving up the fight against smoking.

Medicare will now pay for cessation counseling for any beneficiary who wants to quit. Until now, this service was covered only for Medicare recipients who had a smoking-related illness or symptoms of such an illness.

About 4.5 million adults over age 65 (the age of Medicare eligibility) smoke, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Tobacco-related disease will cost Medicare about $800 billion between 1995 and 2015, the agency estimates.

"Giving older Americans and persons with disabilities who rely on Medicare the coverage they need for counseling treatments that can aid them in quitting will have a positive impact on their health and quality of life," Center for Medicare and Medicare Services Administrator Don Berwick, MD, said in a statement.

While government agencies are doing everything they can to educate the public, the CDC report issued Wednesday notes that the smoking rate among U.S. adults has remained essentially flat since 2004.  Yet a 2007 CDC report noted that the smoking rate dropped that year to 19.8% from 20.8% the prior year.

Thomas J. Glynn, PhD, American Cancer Society's director of cancer science and trends and international cancer control said of the 2007 CDC report, "Adult tobacco user prevalence is now under 20 percent for the first time since tobacco use rates began to fall during the mid-1960s."

Glynn noted that an increase in the price of cigarettes may have contributed to the drop in smoking in 2007 among U.S. adults.