ACADEMY PUBLIC POLICIES

How have the Surgeon General’s Reports affected the smoking habits of Americans?

Since the publication of the Surgeon General’s Reports, along with the mounting evidence that cigarettes were both dangerous to one’s health and addictive, there has been a steady decline in smoking among Americans, including teenagers.

Particularly as the dangers of environmental smoke came to the public’s attention, organizations enacted rules to develop more smoke-free public facilities. Bans on smoking in public places are almost universal in the United States.

Immediately after the first year that the Report was made public (1964), the number of smokers declined. However, the next year the industry rebounded, reporting record sales and an increase in the per capita consumption of tobacco products. During the 1980s, cigarette consumption reached a critical point, after which the rates of smoking in the United States began a slow and progressive decline. In 1982, one third (33%) of all adults were smokers; three years later the number had fallen to 30%. The second Surgeon General’s Report about secondhand smoke, published in 1986, set off a cataclysmic shift away from public smoking because it adversely affected both smokers and nonsmokers. Workplace initiatives banning cigarette smoking proliferated. By the twenty-first century, smoking has declined more dramatically, and now smoking has become more of a private rather than public activity.

The second Surgeon General’s - Report about secondhand smoke, published in 1986, set off a cataclysmic shift away from public smoking because it adversely affected both smokers and nonsmokers