Printer-friendly Version

Page 1 of 5

The Surgeons General and Smoking

On January 11, 1964, a most unusual press conference was held behind closed doors in the State Department auditorium to release the report of the Surgeon General's committee on Smoking and Health. The press conference was held on a Saturday to minimize the effects of the report on the stock market and to ensure coverage in the Sunday newspapers. All of the approximately 200 reporters attending were required to remain for the entire session. Each was given a copy of the final report and allowed to study it for about an hour. Reporters were then permitted to question the Surgeon General and the committee members about the report. Finally the doors were opened and the reporters raced out to file their stories. Surgeon General Luther Terry later recalled: "The report hit the country like a bombshell. It was front page news and the lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad."

That report is now viewed, and justly so, as a milestone in the campaign against tobacco in this country. However, this famous 1964 report was not the first time that the name of a Public Health Service Surgeon General was associated with a statement about the health hazards of tobacco. As quoted by Republican Senator Reed Smoot of Utah in a June 10, 1929, speech on the Senate floor, Surgeon General Hugh Cumming claimed that cigarettes tended to cause nervousness, insomnia and other ill effects in women. He warned that smoking could lower the "physical tone" of the nation. Smoot was calling upon the authority of the Surgeon General in an unsuccessful attempt to push the Senate to pass a bill that he had introduced to bring tobacco under the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration.

Admittedly, Surgeon General Cumming's condemnation or smoking was rather a weak one. It was, first of all aimed only at women smokers. Like many other physicians of his time, Cumming believed that women were more susceptible than men to certain injuries, especially of the nervous system. While he was not convinced that smoking by women was harmful in all cases, he was concerned about the damage that excessive smoking might do to young women. Cumming, a smoker himself, also wished to distance himself from the more vociferous of the anti-tobacco reformers of the day, many of whom were also associated with the temperance movement. What apparently motivated him to speak out was aggressive advertising aimed at women and young people.

Cumming's rather limited attack on cigarettes does not appear to have had any significant consequences. It's merely an interesting footnote in the history of the campaign against smoking. His view was typical of physicians of the 1920s: smoking was not seen as a significant health threat for most people. However, the evidence that was eventually to convince the American medical profession and the general public that smoking was 'indeed hazardous to one's health slowly began to accumulate.

continue