Special Report

Windham County Has the Highest Smoking Rate in Connecticut

Samuel Stebbins

Published: December 1, 2021 8:00 am

Cigarette sales climbed in the U.S. in 2020 for the first time in two decades. Americans bought a total of 203.7 billion cigarettes last year, up from 202.9 billion the year before, according to a Federal Trade Commision report. The uptick coincided with increased cigarette promotional and ad spending by tobacco companies.

Smoking claims nearly half a million American lives annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 16 million Americans are living with a serious illness caused by smoking. Tobacco use also has an economic impact, including more than $225 billion spent each year on medical expenses to treat the smoking-related illness in the U.S. and over $156 billion in lost productivity.

Windham County, home to the unincorporated community of Willimantic, has the highest smoking rate of any county or county equivalent in Connecticut. An estimated 16.4% of the 18 and older population are smokers — meaning they smoke every day or most days and have smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. The smoking rate across the state as a whole stands at 12.5%.

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and places where large shares of the population are smokers often have lower than average life expectancy at birth. Windham County is no exception. Life expectancy at birth in the county is an estimated 78.5 years, below the comparable 80.9 years across all of Connecticut.

All data on smoking rates, life expectancy, and self reported health status used in this story are from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program’s 2021 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps report. Only counties and county equivalents with a 2019 five-year population estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau of 1,000 or more were considered.