Surgeon General Links Smoking to Cancer: Health Revolution

Surgeon General Luther Terry chose a Saturday to drop the bombshell, deliberately timing the release so stock markets would have two days to absorb the shock before Monday trading. The calculation proved warranted. His 387-page report, compiled from more than 7,000 scientific articles, delivered a verdict the tobacco industry had spent decades and millions of dollars trying to prevent: cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. The evidence had been building for years. British researchers had drawn the connection in the early 1950s, and the UK's Royal College of Physicians published its own damning report in 1962. But America was tobacco country. Cigarettes generated enormous tax revenue, sponsored beloved television programs, and employed hundreds of thousands of workers across the South. The industry ran advertisements featuring physicians endorsing their favorite brands. Roughly 42 percent of American adults smoked. Terry assembled a ten-member advisory committee, deliberately including scientists the tobacco industry could not dismiss as biased. Over fourteen months, they reviewed every major study on smoking and disease. Their conclusion was unequivocal: smoking caused lung cancer and chronic bronchitis, and likely contributed to cardiovascular disease and emphysema. The report estimated that average smokers had nine to ten times the risk of developing lung cancer compared to nonsmokers. The immediate response was seismic. Tobacco stocks plunged. Congress passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act in 1965, mandating health warnings on every pack. Television and radio advertising for cigarettes was banned by 1971. American smoking rates began a steady decline from 42 percent to under 14 percent today, preventing an estimated eight million premature deaths over the following decades. The tobacco industry knew. Internal documents revealed years later showed companies had confirmed the cancer link in their own laboratories and buried the findings. Terry's report didn't discover the danger; it made it impossible to ignore.