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Smoking Essay

Decent Essays

Smoking has a very progressive history, which is important in understanding the social aspect of the behavior. In the early 1500s, Christopher Columbus brought the tobacco leaves of the America’s to Europe. From there, the world found a great love for tobacco, making it a crop of great commodity and thus crating more demand for slave labor at the time. After the Civil War, smoking continued to be a popular commodity, even through World War II where a General reported cigarette rations being equally important to his soldiers as bullets (U.S. Tobacco History, 2017). In 1930 German researchers found a correlation between smoking and cancer. This finding actually created an anti-smoking movement within the Nazi’s of Germany at the time, …show more content…

Cases of lung cancer increased in the 1930’s with WWI. Cigarettes were highly valuable to American soldiers as well as others. However, Nazi regimens banned cigarettes and other forms of tobacco among their soldiers to promote purity after the link between smoking and lung cancer was found (Lawler, 2014). The United States slowly began to change the culture and social attitude toward smoking. In 1964 the Surgeon General Committee declared smoking as a cause of premature death. The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 required that health warning on cigarette and tobacco packets as well as an annual report to Congress from the Federal Trade Commission. This act also tightened the leashes on manufacturing companies requiring that they cannot describe cigarettes as “better or light” for advertising. In 2009 the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act granted the FDA complete authority over the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of tobacco products. This act also prohibited target marketing, which during the 40s and 50s children were the target population. Overall the attempt for smoking cessation has been very successful with only a small population of smokers today. This is due to the intervention of communities concerning their citizen’s health. Minnesota was the first state to ban smoking in public places. The cities of Beverly Hills, California and Aspen, Colorado were the first to ban smoking

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