The ads were jarring: a man with a hole in his throat where his larynx, or voice box, had once been. A woman whose teeth and jaw had been removed after oral cancer. Another woman speaking in a robotic voice, which was altered when her larynx was removed: “I wish I’d never seen a cigarette in my entire life.” A black screen followed, saying she died two days later.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit. Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.
There is no definitive evidence linking the donations to the lapse of the ad campaign. But the decision to terminate it was one of several steps the administration has taken to unravel federal government antismoking initiatives that had long had bipartisan support during a time when the administration has delivered significant policy wins to tobacco companies.
The C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Health, which managed the campaign and worked with states on smoking cessation measures, has been shut down for more than a year, after its staff was laid off as part of the administration’s government downsizing efforts. While hundreds of other federal health employees were eventually rehired, the smoking office staff members have not been.
Even after Congress restored the office’s funding late last summer, its employees have remained on paid leave as litigation challenging the firings plays out.
In recent weeks, under pressure from Congress, the C.D.C. has given states diminished funding to air ads from the campaign’s archive, but the federal government will not produce new ads or negotiate contracts for them to air nationwide. The ads had prompted millions of smokers to dial state quit lines for help on how to stop smoking. In interviews, people who ran quit lines in several states said that since the ads went off the air, calls have plummeted along with enrollment in programs that offered counseling and nicotine gum and patches.
The abandonment of an effort that was widely regarded as a public health triumph has puzzled antismoking activists who point out that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s platform was based on ending chronic diseases, which are a well-known consequence of smoking.
“We find it very ironic in an administration that wants to make America healthy again that we’re cutting all of these resources related to smoking and vaping,” said Nancy Brown, the chief executive of the American Heart Association.
Helping adults stop smoking is one of the most evidence-backed ways to improve the public’s health. Smoking rates in the United States have fallen significantly, to less than 10 percent of adults, compared with 42 percent of adults in the early 1960s. Still, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the country, causing about 490,000 premature deaths each year.
A national survey of adults who smoked from 2012 through 2018 found that the Tips from Former Smokers campaign was associated with more than 16 million people attempting to quit smoking and one million succeeding. During those years alone, the campaign was associated with saving an estimated $7.3 billion in health care costs.
“It’s crazy that they have cut this funding if they really want to save lives and save money,” said Sally Herndon, who ran North Carolina’s tobacco control program until her retirement last year.
Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the C.D.C. “remains committed to tobacco prevention and control and continues to support this priority through outreach, education and surveillance.”
The cuts have come as tobacco companies have aggressively lobbied the administration for policy changes that would likely increase their market share of vaping and other nicotine products.
The New York Times recently reported that Reynolds American, which makes Newport and Camel cigarettes, saw a coveted new federal policy take shape that would allow an entire new class of flavored e-cigarettes onto the market. The initiative was announced just days after a $5 million donation and lunch with President Trump at his golf course in Florida. Executives from Altria, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, were also present.
The new policy was crafted over the objections of Dr. Marty Makary, then the F.D.A. commissioner, who cited it as the reason for his resignation in May. It stunned some public health experts, who say the F.D.A. set aside one of its central authorities: to approve or reject individual products based on their merits.
“It’s very clear this guidance is a gift to the tobacco industry on a silver platter with a side of public health malpractice,” said Brian King, a former leader of the F.D.A.’s tobacco division and executive vice president for U.S. programs of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Opponents of the policy say flavored vapes will introduce young people who have never smoked to nicotine products.
But Ms. Hilliard, the health department spokeswoman, said the F.D.A. was focused on protecting youth and a “science-based review process for tobacco products.”
She added: “Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. And the agency supports the development of products that may provide less harmful alternatives for adults who smoke.”
The federal cuts to antismoking programs and what some view as lenient new policies represent a reversal of decades of setbacks for tobacco companies under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The C.D.C.’s shuttered Office on Smoking and Health employed experts on effective tobacco interventions who worked with state health officials to advance antismoking policies such as bans on indoor smoking, higher tobacco taxes and education for parents about e-cigarettes.
The office sent most of its $240 million budget to states each year, but shortly after laying off the staff, in April 2025, the C.D.C. notified states that their annual funding for tobacco control would not be coming.
Many state tobacco control offices cut their own staff as a result, including in New York, Texas and North Carolina. Late last year, Congress reinstated some funding to states that had relied on the C.D.C. office for expertise.
“We know that we really save lives and save money with tobacco prevention and control,” said Ms. Herndon, who until recently led North Carolina’s tobacco control efforts. “But without the training and technical assistance and support from the Office on Smoking and Health, a lot of the newer staff coming along are struggling to know what to do.”
The Tips From Former Smokers campaign went off the air around September of last year, though some larger states such as New York and California continued to run some antismoking ads.
Since then, calls to 1-800-QUIT-NOW lines — which traditionally experience a 30 percent spike in the weeks after an ad campaign — have fallen off significantly.
National data on the quit line call volume was not compiled for the last year after the federal employee in charge was let go, said Thomas Ylioja, the president of the North American Quitline Consortium.
But at Quit for Life, an organization that operates quit lines in 19 states, Guam and Washington, D.C., calls fell by 25 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2025 when the ads were on the air, according to Nick Fradkin, the group’s director of public health strategy.
Officials in other states said calls had fallen off too — by about 45 percent in Texas, 25 percent in California and 18 percent in New York. In Virginia enrollment in the quit line counseling services fell by half from October 2025 through February 2026, said Logan Anderson, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Health.
In recent weeks, the C.D.C. offered $40 million, down from the usual $65 million, for states to air archived antismoking ads. It is unclear whether new ads will be created.
In North Carolina, at least, “we don’t have the media machine that produced those fabulous ads,” Ms. Herndon said.
