Tobacco turning point

To quote an old cigarette-marketing slogan, you’ve come a long way, baby. It took health advocates decades to overcome tobacco-industry resistance to establishing a link to cancer and many more years to shift public opinion and behavior, but today marks a milestone: the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Surgeon General’s report that first authoritatively asserted a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
It’s hard for many Americans to remember a time when smoking wasn’t linked to cancer, but smoking was pervasive in 1964 when Surgeon General Luther Terry issued his report. As the Associated Press recently recalled, “Smoke hung in the air in restaurants, offices and airplane cabins. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked, and there was a good chance your doctor was among them.”
Evidence already had been building in the two decades before that smoking was leading to lung cancer, a type of cancer considered very rare until the end of the 19th century. With a growing number of studies showing a link, more than 40 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup in 1954 — a full 10 years before the surgeon general’s report — said they thought that cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer. Still, Stanford University history professor Robert N. Proctor says cigarette makers disputed this evidence “as part of an orchestrated conspiracy to salvage cigarette sales,” putting out all kinds of propaganda to counter the scientific evidence.Monte Carlo Red
Before Terry’s report, the American Cancer Society announced in 1954 that smokers were at a higher risk of getting cancer. Terry’s predecessor as surgeon general, Leroy Burney, issued statements in 1957 and 1959 that heavy smoking caused lung cancer, but the warnings were little heeded and were countered by the tobacco industry. It wasn’t until Terry, pressured by anti-smoking advocates, convened a panel of experts and released his 1964 report that the tide began to turn in a major way. The surgeon general himself, the Associated Press recalls, got serious and quit smoking a few months before the report was issued.
There was swift reaction, but then human nature took over. U.S. cigarette consumption dropped by 15 percent in the three months following the blockbuster report — then crept back up over time. Nicotine is a powerful drug, and is especially hard to kick when everyone else is lighting up.
It took decades of small steps, from warning labels to laws banning smoking in most shared spaces, but the public-health situation today is greatly improved. The smoking rate in America has fallen by more than half, to 18 percent. Just last week, Ohio State University adopted a campus-wide smoking ban, joining at least 14 other colleges in Ohio and more than 1,000 across the country that have adopted such bans.
Still, there is more to be done. That 18 percent of the population still translates to more than 43 million U.S. smokers. And many teens still are lighting up despite all the warnings and irrefutable evidence of the risks of cigarette smoking. Those seeking more information and resources on health risks and tips for quitting smoking can visit the American Cancer Society website, www.cancer.org. It’s never too late to quit, nor to educate young people about the danger of starting