The History of Smoking

“Reached by telephone, Califano recalled that America’s changing attitudes toward cigarettes began with the release of the first Surgeon General’s report in 1964. The government’s top health officials’ definitive warning that ‘Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer’ was considered such a bombshell that the top-secret report was released to reporters on a Saturday morning in a locked State Department auditorium. The report put one of the first nails in the coffin of this deadly habit–one that was tacitly acknowledged in a recent Mad Men episode dubbed “Blowing Smoke” and is highlighted on Mad Men’s own AMC blog.”