Comprehensive Smoking Education Act - Brief Overview of Cigarette Warning Labels

Brief Overview of Cigarette Warning Labels

Researchers and statisticians began to suspect a link between smoking and lung cancer as early as 1900. The first medical studies linking smoking to this and other illnesses began to appear in the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1960 over 7,000 studies established a link between smoking and health problems. In 1962, with this ever expanding body of medical research as a backdrop, Dr. Luther L. Terry, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Heath Service, convened an advisory committee to examine the issue of the link between smoking and illness. Though there were a few restrictions during the 17th century, significant anti-smoking legislation was not enforced until later in the 19th century. According to the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health published in 1964, the Surgeon General reported not only that the nicotine and tar in cigarettes caused lung cancer, but also that smoking was the most important cause of chronic bronchitis, increased risk of dying from chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and caused coronary disease. As a result, Congress enacted the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act in 1965, which created the first cigarette warning label in the United States by requiring health warnings on all cigarette packages saying "Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." A few years later, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969, which banned cigarette advertising on television and radio as well as slightly changed the health warning to "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health." However, in a 1981 report to Congress, the Federal Trade Commission concluded that the health warning labels were not effective enough on public knowledge and peoples' attitudes towards smoking. This led to the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act of 1984.