Reducing the health consequences of smoking : 25 years of progress : a report of the Surgeon General : executive summary

Exactly 25 years ago, on January 11, 1964, Luther L. Terry, M.D., Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, released the report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. That landmark document, now referred to as the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, was America's first widely publicized official recognition that cigarette smoking is a cause of cancer and other serious diseases. On the basis of more than 7,000 articles relating to smoking and disease already available at that time in the biomedical literature, the Advisory Committee concluded that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men, a probable cause of lung cancer in women, and the most important cause of chronic bronchitis. The Committee stated that \u201cCigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.\u201d What would constitute \u201cappropriate remedial action\u201d was left unspecified. But the release of the report was the first in a series of steps, still being taken 25 years later, to diminish the impact of tobacco use on the health of the American people. This 1989 Report, the 20th in a series of Surgeon General's Reports on the Health Consequences of Smoking, spells out the dramatic progress that has been achieved in the past quarter century against one of our deadliest risks."Executive summary" incorrectly printed on title page; pagination: xxi, 703 p.CDC-INFO Pub ID 993532993532Shipping list no.: 89-514-P.Includes bibliographical references and index.1989704