Tobacco

In 1964 for the first time in history of number of cigarettes smoked by the average American was less than the year before. Section will consider the reasons for this change in an old, firmly established, socially acceptable, and widespread habit.

Tobacco was colonial America’s most valuable export and helped to finance the Revolutionary War. Tobacco was smoked in pipes, in cigars, and in crude cigarettes; powered tobacco was used as snuff or mixed with molasses and chewed. Smoking, however, did not become widespread until machines were developed for the mass production of cigarettes, so that cigarettes became easily available, neatly packaged, and suitable for promotion by advertising techniques.

During World War I cigarettes were provided, mostly free, to United States soldiers. The result was tremendous increase in cigarette smoking; a second increase in smokers followed the advertising and other promotional that led to the acceptance of smoking by women.

Greatly increased advertising which associates smoking with health, vigor, romance, success, and the good life has presented an almost irresistible appeal to youth to take up the habit. The result was a phenomenal annual increase in the number of cigarettes sold and in per-capita consumption. In 1963 a peak of 4,345 cigarettes per year per person 18 years of age and older was reached. In 1964 a drop followed the release of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. In 1967, however, a downward trend began which has continued since then. As a result, in 1970 there were 10 million fewer cigarette smokers in the United States than in 1946, despite a population increase during this period.

Why the Change

The basic reason for the change in public attitude about cigarette smoking it the vast accumulation of medical and scientific evidence concerning the serious damage that the use of tobacco particularly cigarettes, does to health, there had long been suspicion of this, and from time to time significant medical reports were published. However, it is only during the past 25 years that the really conclusive studies of this subject have been conducted.

A major reason that the effects of cigarette smoking were not discovered earlier is that the disabling and fatal diseases caused by smoking develop slowly, with 20, 30, or even more years elapsing before the diseases is recognized. Unfortunately, by the time the smoking-related diseases are diagnosed, they frequently have advanced to a point that a cure is difficult if not impossible. Only within the past quarter century have vast numbers of people smoked cigarettes long enough to have the effects become apparent in mortality statistics.

The studies upon which the effects of smoking are based are of three types; (1) epidemiological; a comparison of the rates of illness and death of smokers and of nonsmokers; (2) pathological; the microscopic examination of tissues from smokers and from nonsmokers; and (3) experimental; the effects upon laboratory animals of exposure to tobacco smoke and its products.

The Surgeon General has estimated that cigarette smoking is responsible for at least 300,000 deaths each year in the United States—more than 800 a day. Approximately half of those are due to cardiovascular diseases, about one-fourth to cancer, and about one-fourth to other diseases.

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Category: Tobacco