A new study released this week in a medical journal show changes in tobacco use and laws have added 20 more years of life to more than 8 million Americans, according to CNN.
The Journal of the American Medical Association's only focus is tobacco and smoking and their latest issue highlight what life for American's would be like if Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry had not made the announcement fifty years ago that smoking was tied to earlier death and lung cancer, CNN reported.
"The strongest relationship between cigarette smoking and health is in the field of lung cancer. There is a very strong relationship, and probably a causal relationship, between heart disease and cigarette smoking," was Dr. Terry reported, according to CNN. His report led to the largest health campaign in United States history against smoking and tobacco, CNN reported.
Almost half of U.S. residents are protected by indoor smoking bans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but more than 440,000 Americans are still dying yearly, CNN reported.
"Well, it's kind of a glass half empty, glass half full story," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Thomas Frieden told CNN. "On the one hand, half as high of a percentage of adults smoke, on the other hand it remains the leading preventable cause of death in this country, and if you smoke, quitting is by far the single most important thing you can do to improve your health."
Measures were taken with labeling cigarette boxes and removing cigarette ads from playing on television, CNN reported. Public announcements against tobacco and anti-smoking laws came shortly after.
"The report and subsequent tobacco control efforts represent the most dramatic and successful public health campaign in modern history, in terms of benefit to the entire population," David Levy, the study's senior author, told CNN.
According to the authors, if anti-tobacco laws had not been put into place, American smoking habits and life expectancy would be similar to that of the 1960s, according to CNN. The authors also stated life expectancy had been raised by up to 2 years due to tobacco control.
Warnings labels on the hazard smoking could be to ones health began appearing on cigarette boxes across the country with the first one reading: "Smoking could be hazardous to your health," CNN reported. In 1970, it was changed to: "The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to our health."
The current warning labels we see today are more straightforward and say things like "Cigarettes are addictive"; "Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease"; and "Smoking can kill you," CNN reported.
