The archive / Stimulants and intoxicants
1950–1964 · Worldwide
Doctors: smoking may cause lung cancer
Tobacco
Panic meter
The verdict
The warnings were long dismissed as exaggerated, helped along by the tobacco industry. They turned out to be right – if anything, too cautious.
Reality meter
What was said?
The link between smoking and lung cancer was suspected as early as the beginning of the 20th century. In 1950 the British researchers Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill published a study showing a clear association, and several American studies pointed in the same direction.
The tobacco industry responded with advertisements about "doctors who smoke" and by funding research designed to sow doubt.
The verdict: what happened next?
The US Surgeon General's report of 1964 established that smoking causes lung cancer. Today we know that tobacco kills around eight million people a year.
This is a panic in reverse: the alarm was justified, but the real danger was underestimated for decades.
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