Video: '11th January 1964: US Surgeon General publishes report on the health effects of tobacco smoking'

(Saturday, January 11, 1964, released to the press at 9:00 a.m. EST) — Heavy cigarette smoking is the principal cause of cancer of the lungs and the larynx and a health hazard so grave as to call for remedial action, a blue-ribbon science panel concluded today.

The nature of the action was not spelled out.

Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry of the U.S. Public Health Service said his agency will move at once to recommend remedial action called for by the science group.

“I would advise anyone to discontinue smoking cigarettes,” Terry told a news conference.

Video: 'Smoking: "A health hazard of sufficient importance"'

The 11-man special advisory committee on smoking and health (five of whom were cigarette smokers) took 14 months to evaluate more than 8,000 studies of the effect of smoking on health.

It undertook no fresh research but decided available evidence shows that cigarette smoking “far outweighs” all other causes of lung cancer and cancer of the larynx – in men and perhaps in women.

It had no such clear-cut indictment of cigarette smoking in the area of heart and blood vessel disease or lesser ail-ments sometimes associated with smoking.

But, broadly, the panel took the view that the more you smoke the more you risk early death.

Video: 'Top 10 Terrible Things Smoking Does to Your Body'

The special group was not requested to make specific recommendations for laws or regulations to offset smoking hazards but it concluded: “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.”

After releasing the 387-page document, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, Terry declared that there will be “no foot-dragging” in seeking possible remedial steps.

It was not released to the press until 9:00 on a Saturday morning, a day chosen because the American stock markets were closed during the weekend and in order to reach the greatest number of readers in Sunday newspapers; and only then to a gathering of journalists who were invited to a secure auditorium at the U.S. State Department building and not allowed to use a telephone until the press conference was over.