U.S. CDC Programs

In 2025, the Administration eliminated CDC OSH as part of a large-scale reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and proposed eliminating funding for the CDC’s tobacco control program. Eliminating this program would greatly undermine the nation’s efforts to reduce tobacco use, costing lives and healthcare dollars.

Fortunately, after advocacy by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and our public health partners, Congress approved level funding for the CDC’s tobacco control program in Fiscal Year 2026. This action demonstrated strong, bipartisan support in Congress for the CDC’s work. We are now working to secure funding in FY 2027 and to support legal efforts to reinstate staff at the Office on Smoking and Health.

CDC’s work protects kids, saves lives and reduces healthcare costs.   

The CDC’s Tips from Former Smokers public education campaign has helped more than one million people quit smoking, prevented an estimated 129,100 smoking-related deaths, and saved an estimated $7.3 billion in healthcare costs. 

The CDC provides grants to all 50 states and territories to support state and local efforts to prevent youth tobacco use and help adult tobacco users quit. 

The CDC also provides funding to state quitlines, which provide telephone-based counseling services to help tobacco users to quit and, in most states, tobacco cessation medications. Smokers who use quitlines are at least two to three times more likely to succeed in quitting compared to those who try to quit on their own.

Eliminating funding for CDC’s tobacco control program would:

• Eliminate the only dedicated source of federal funding for state tobacco control programs;
• Reduce services to help tobacco users quit;
• End an effective, cost-saving media campaign; and
• Weaken surveillance of youth tobacco use and the emergence of new threats.