They Are Cancer Sticks
The medical experts link smoking and lung disease
It was the beginning of the end of America's long love affair with the cigarette. On July 12, 1957, U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney announced the unequivocal findings of a commission of top American doctors: "Excessive cigarette smoking," he said, "is one of the causative factors of lung cancer."
Evidence of the dangers of smoking had been accumulating for years, but Burney's announcement threw a bright spotlight on the issue. "The statement from the surgeon general elevated the concern from individual studies and articles to a stamp of concern by the highest doctor in the land," says Ron Davis, president of the American Medical Association.
Burney's declaration was immediately disputed by the tobacco industry, which claimed that the studies that inspired it were flawed. Independent research, the industry insisted, had shown no link between smoking and cancer. Denial remained the industry's stance until 1999, when Philip Morris, under intense public pressure, admitted that the link between smoking and lung cancer was, in fact, indisputable.
"The tobacco industry was already engaged in a major campaign of disinformation, doing everything they could to undermine the conclusions of the medical and scientific community," says historian Allan Brandt, author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America.
Perhaps that's why the public kept lighting up. Cigarette sales reached an all-time high in the first half of 1957, even as many smokers were switching to filter-tipped varieties in the mistaken belief that they were safer.