Smoking Bans and Car-Seat Bribes: Five Lessons from the 50-Year Effort to Reduce Smoking and Save Lives
Fifty years ago this week, Surgeon General Luther Terry released perhaps the most important public health document in U.S. history, the now-famous first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. It made explicit and public what virtually every scientist not on the payroll of the tobacco companies knew and acknowledged: that smoking cigarettes was deadly.
In the 50 years since, public health advocates have taken the insights and scientific legitimacy conferred by that report and mounted a public health campaign to change local, state and federal policies to restrict public smoking, tax tobacco sales and curb the marketing efforts of Big Tobacco. This work has had an enormous impact (though there’s still plenty to do).
Today in Forbes, PI’s Larry Cohen and Rob Waters share some of the lessons from that 50-year effort. Please take a look and share it with your friends.