Few public health initiatives have been as successful as the campaign against cigarettes, an effort that began in the early 1900s and culminated in the now famous 1964 Surgeon’s General report, which stated unequivocally that smoking causes cancer.
In the years that followed, the response was as swift as it was significant. Americans quit smoking cigarettes in droves, abandoning the once beloved habit on a scale that was hard to imagine at the time. Today, American adults, on average, smoke fewer than 1,300 cigarettes per year, or about a third as many as they did in 1963 (4,200).
The precipitous fall has offered a glimpse into what happens when a country quits smoking cigarettes. And the answer is a ton of good things. The dip has coincided with steep declines in the rate of lung cancer, the death rate associated with cardiovascular disease (it peaked in 1968) and a number of other negative health outcomes.
But it has also, interestingly, coincided with another trend that isn’t quite as encouraging: […]
