Today’s post won’t relate directly to bicycles or cycling. I am, however, confident that many of you will find it relevant and interesting.
I can recall when a yellow fog filled coffee shops, department stores, subway station corridors and other public venues. Of course, almost none of us noticed it until it was gone.
The first step in clearing shared air came exactly sixty years ago today. Dr. Luther Terry made an announcement to a roomful of reporters: A longtime, wide-ranging study led him to conclude that smoking cigarettes causes cancer.
It may well have been the single most important announcement ever made by a U.S. Surgeon General. Smoking cigarettes was considered normal, even healthy, for adults. (Although I have never smoked, I gave cartons of Kools, Camels, Marlboros, Pall Malls and Viceroys as gifts for Christmas, birthdays and other occasions.) The tobacco industry was therefore much bigger than it is now, which is why Dr. Terry—himself a longtime smoker—made the announcement on a Saturday : officials wanted to minimize the report’s effects on the stock market.
(On a related note, tobacco played a significant role in colonialism.)
Of course, Americans didn’t collectively drop their cigarettes once the report became public. But over a period of years, puffing, whether in a public or private, was pushed to the margins. A year after the report came out, warnings were printed on cigarette packs; five years after that, television and radio ads for cigarettes were banned. During that time and afterward, entities from government agencies to real estate offices prohibited smoking on their premises. Countless private citizens did so in their living spaces; cities forbade it in and around apartment buildings.
I’ve already mentioned one result—the disappearance of the yellow haze in public spaces—of the report and ensuing bans. Another occurs to me now: I rarely see an ashtray in anyone’s home, and never see them in public spaces. Also, it’s been a while since anyone asked me,”Mind if I smoke?”
For those of you who prefer empirical data to anecdotes, there’s this: In 1965, the year the Surgeon General’s warning began to appear on cigarette packs, nearly 42 percent of Americans aged 18 and older smoked; by 2018, that proportion had fallen by two-thirds, to just under 14 percent. (It climbed slightly during the pandemic.)
It’s estimated that the report and its effects have saved 8 million lives: nearly the population of my hometown of New York City. Perhaps equally significant, that report precipitated a cultural change in which smoking is not as sociallly acceptable, let alone fashionable, as it once was. And the anti-smoking campaign has spread throughout the industrialized world: Even in France, where the image of a soigné sophisticate included a Gauloise or Gitane clasped with thumb and forefinger, cigarette packets bear the same stark warnings seen in other countries. And, during my most recent visit a year ago, I saw considerably less smoking—and clearer air in cafes and bistros—than I saw during earlier sojourns.
Oh, and I can’t recall the last time I saw a cyclist like an old riding buddy of mine who stopped at the bottom of any hill or ramp and lit up before starting his climb. And I don’t think a scene like this will ever be repeated during a race:
