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Today in History: President Nixon Signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act
04/01/10
On April 1, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law. This historic legislation banned cigarette advertising on American radio and television and required a printed health warning to appear on all packs of cigarettes sold in the United States.
The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act grew out of a 1964 document called Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General. U.S. Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry convened a panel of experts to review more than 7,000 scientific studies concerning the relationship between cigarette smoking and public health. The evidence indicated that cigarette smoking was responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality rate of smokers over non-smokers. It found a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer, bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease, and low birth weight in babies. When the report was released in January 1964, Terry recalled that it “hit the country like a bombshell. It was front page news and a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad.”
The U.S. Congress responded to the subsequent public clamor for regulatory action by introducing the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act in 1969—a year when cigarette companies were the largest advertisers on American television. Although Nixon signed it into law in 1970, it did not take effect until January 2, 1971. The last cigarette commercial in the history of American TV appeared at ten minutes to midnight on January 1, and cigarettes sold after that date carried a printed label that read: “Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.”
Read the 1964 SURGEON GENERAL’S REPORT ON SMOKING AND HEALTH