The First Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health
The First Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health
We need to renew our leadership internationally. We are doing quite the opposite. As of this writing, in negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the US Trade Representative has backed off of a provision that would have permitted countries to establish their own tobacco control policies without the threat of agreementsanctioned lawsuits against them by other nations, often at the behest of the tobacco industry.
We also have to focus on Job One: renewing and indeed intensifying our efforts at home.While we certainly have much to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General's report, the celebration is necessarily muted by the fact that 17% of high school seniors are smokers, one fifth of adult Americans continue to smoke and well over 400 000 of them die every year as a result, and public interest in and commitment to tobacco control have waned. To many Americans, smoking is "old news," a problem that has been "solved." The vast majority of Americans can no longer smoke at work or in restaurants or bars. Smoking has largely disappeared from the environments frequented by the nation's most highly educated and politically engaged population. Increasingly, as noted above, smoking is relegated to those at the bottom of the economic and educational ladders, those least able to afford the high prices cigarettes command today, and those least able to demand action on the part of government.
We have tools that work. Tobacco control programs emphasizing higher taxes, smoke-free environments, and antismoking media campaigns, and offering evidence-based support to smokers wanting to quit, could expedite the day we get smoking prevalence down to 10% nationally. We will get there, but research suggests that unless there is much more aggressive application of effective tobacco control policies, it will be three to four decades before we cut the smoking population in half again. For this to occur will require far more political commitment and leadership than has been evident to date. And a smoking prevalence of 10% cannot be our final goal. A national prevalence of 10% will doom us to a burden of 100 000 or more smokingproduced deaths every year for decades to come. That is simply not acceptable.
United States' Role Going Forward
We need to renew our leadership internationally. We are doing quite the opposite. As of this writing, in negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the US Trade Representative has backed off of a provision that would have permitted countries to establish their own tobacco control policies without the threat of agreementsanctioned lawsuits against them by other nations, often at the behest of the tobacco industry.
We also have to focus on Job One: renewing and indeed intensifying our efforts at home.While we certainly have much to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General's report, the celebration is necessarily muted by the fact that 17% of high school seniors are smokers, one fifth of adult Americans continue to smoke and well over 400 000 of them die every year as a result, and public interest in and commitment to tobacco control have waned. To many Americans, smoking is "old news," a problem that has been "solved." The vast majority of Americans can no longer smoke at work or in restaurants or bars. Smoking has largely disappeared from the environments frequented by the nation's most highly educated and politically engaged population. Increasingly, as noted above, smoking is relegated to those at the bottom of the economic and educational ladders, those least able to afford the high prices cigarettes command today, and those least able to demand action on the part of government.
We have tools that work. Tobacco control programs emphasizing higher taxes, smoke-free environments, and antismoking media campaigns, and offering evidence-based support to smokers wanting to quit, could expedite the day we get smoking prevalence down to 10% nationally. We will get there, but research suggests that unless there is much more aggressive application of effective tobacco control policies, it will be three to four decades before we cut the smoking population in half again. For this to occur will require far more political commitment and leadership than has been evident to date. And a smoking prevalence of 10% cannot be our final goal. A national prevalence of 10% will doom us to a burden of 100 000 or more smokingproduced deaths every year for decades to come. That is simply not acceptable.
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