Smoking dip hits a plateau

ATLANTA — Smoke filled airplanes, offices and schoolyards 40 years ago when the first surgeon general's report on the hazards of tobacco was released — on Jan. 11, a Saturday, to minimize the impact on Wall Street.

Today, smoking rates have dropped by half, cigarette ads are banned from radio and TV, and most smokers have tried to quit. A few states and many cities and counties — even tobacco strongholds such as Lexington, Ky. — forbid lighting up in public places.

But health authorities say the decline in smoking rates has reached a plateau. Women now smoke nearly as much as men. Tobacco marketing exceeds $11 billion a year. And states have spent much of their $40 billion windfall in tobacco lawsuit settlement money to balance budgets, not curb smoking.

Have the anti-smoking victories outweighed challenges in the four decades since the landmark report linked smoking to lung cancer, bronchitis and heart disease? Most experts seem to call it a draw.

"The world is certainly a different place," said Tom Glynn, director of cancer science and trends at the Atlanta-based American Cancer Society, one of the organizations that pushed for the 1964 report. "We've moved from total acceptance of tobacco to a situation where virtually everyone, including smokers, is aligned against it."

But Dr. David Satcher, himself a former surgeon general and current director of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine, said that smoking remains the nation's leading cause of preventable death.

"Despite all that we know about smoking and health, over 50 million people (in the United States) are still smoking," he said. "There's no way to feel comfortable with that."

Seven weeks after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his surgeon general, Luther Terry, released his landmark 387-page report in Kennedy's press room. The nation rallied against tobacco.

Congress required warning labels on cigarette packages the next year and banned radio and TV ads in 1969. The government required nonsmoking sections in airplanes in 1973 and now bans smoking on all U.S. flights.

And the rate of smoking began a steep decline: from 43 percent in the mid-'60s to 35 percent in the mid-'70s. It's now at just below 23 percent.