Tobacco control success versus demographic destiny: examining the causes of the low smoking prevalence in California.

We examined the effect of demographics on California's low smoking prevalence. We estimated that if the United States had the same demographics as California, then the US adult smoking prevalence in 2005 would have been 19.3%, 1.6 percentage points lower than the reported 20.9% for the United States, but 4.1 percentage points higher than California's prevalence of 15.2% in 2005. Tobacco control appears to be a much more important factor than demographics in determining California's low smoking rates.