Fewer smokers in Washington than ever before!

Yeah, that's right, some good news on the smoking front. The number of smokers in Washington has been dropping steadily since 1999 and has reached an all-time low (so far, anyway) of 17%.

So that's the good news. The bad news is that of those 17% remaining smokers most are lower-income less-educated adults, and although they are interested in quitting they seem to be having a harder time doing it than the rest of the population.

But Washington seems to be on the right track, currently sitting with the 5th lowest smoking rate in the country. There's talk of routing funds towards giving the low-income population some help to quit smoking, in addition to their already successful approaches of an indoor smoking ban and increased tobacco taxes.