Where There's Smoke ...

It's an ordinary part of day-to-day life now, so much so that most people probably don't give it much thought, but those health warnings on cigarette packages actually got their start on this date in 1964.

The surgeon general, Dr. Luther Leonidas Terry (pictured at left), published a report that cautioned that smoking might be hazardous to a person's health. Up to that point, no such suggestion had ever been made by the U.S. government.

Today, of course, the warnings are much more explicit than they were in Dr. Terry's day, mainly because research has revealed that he was correct. Medical science knows much more about the ill effects of smoking than it did 45 years ago, when smoking was permitted everywhere, even in hospital waiting rooms.

I recall that, when I was a teenager in the 1970s, smoking was still allowed in some places where smoking would be unthinkable today — movie theaters, for example.

And, when I was a young adult, smoking in the workplace was not banned, as it is in just about every workplace today. (I say "just about" because there may be some exceptions to that rule in some places — but I imagine that few exist anymore. I don't think any office in which I've worked in the last 20 years has allowed people to smoke at their desks.)

In recent years, though, more and more communities have banned smoking in public places, in sports arenas, in restaurants, even bars. Some smokers have tried to fight these regulations, protesting that smoking is not illegal and that government oversteps its bounds by playing "mother hen."

No one, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that giving up smoking is easy. Early anti-smoking campaigns may have understated the situation by encouraging smokers to simply "kick the habit" — implying that it's all a matter of "will power" and that failing to give up a vice that is now known to cause cancer, heart disease and a lengthy list of other health problems is a moral shortcoming.

But Dr. Terry, who died in 1985, deserves credit for being the visionary who first alerted the public to the dangers of what was a seemingly innocuous habit. His report led to the passage of the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 — which was maligned by many at the time but may have played a key role in the reduction in smoking rates in this country.

The fight hasn't been won yet, though. About one-fifth of Americans continue to smoke.