In a Puff of Smoke:
The Surgeon General's Report

On January 11, 1964, U. S. Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry—representing an elite 12-member panel of scientists and physicians—gathered 200 reporters in a State Department auditorium in Washington D.C. At this press conference, Dr. Terry unveiled a long-awaited 357-page report on smoking and cancer. For the first time in the United States, a country in which at the time 46% of adults smoked, the message was simple and official: Smoking causes cancer.

The report, titled Smoking and Health but known as "The Surgeon General's Report," contained the following conclusions:

Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking outweighs all other factors . . . Cigarette smoking is much more important than occupational exposures in the causation of lung cancer in the general population . . . Cigarette smoking is the most important of the causes of chronic bronchitis in the United States, and increases the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis and emphysema. . . Although the causative role of cigarette smoking in deaths from coronary disease is not proven, the Committee considers it more prudent from the public health viewpoint to assume that the established association has causative meaning than to suspend judgment until no uncertainty remains.