Beginning in December 1952, the magazine Readers Digest published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.In 1954, the British Doctors Study, a prospective study of some 40 thousand doctors for about 2.5 years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related. In January 1964, the United States Surgeon Generals Report on Smoking and Health likewise began suggesting the relationship between smoking and cancer.As scientific evidence mounted in the 1980s, tobacco companies claimed contributory negligence as the adverse health effects were previously unknown or lacked substantial credibility. Health authorities sided with these claims up until 1998, from which they reversed their position. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, originally between the four largest US tobacco companies and the Attorneys General of 46 states, restricted certain types of tobacco advertisement and required payments for health compensation; which later amounted to the largest civil settlement in United States history.Social campaigns have been instituted in many places to discourage smoking, such as Canadas National Non-Smoking Week. From 1965 to 2006, rates of smoking in the United States declined from 42% to 20.8%. The majority of those who quit were professional, affluent men. Although the per-capita number of smokers decreased, the average number of cigarettes consumed per person per day increased from 22 in 1954 to 30 in 1978. This paradoxical event suggests that those who quit smoked less, while those who continued to smoke moved to smoke more light cigarettes.
When James I of England, a staunch anti-smoker and the author of A Counterblaste to Tobacco, tried to curb the new trend by enforcing a 4000% tax increase on tobacco in 1604 it was unsuccessful, as suggested by the presence of around 7,000 tobacco outlets in London by the early 17th century. From this point on for some centuries, several administrations withdrew from efforts at discouragement and instead turned tobacco trade and cultivation into sometimes lucrative government monopolies.By the mid-17th century most major civilizations had been introduced to tobacco smoking and in many cases had already assimilated it into the native culture, despite some continued attempts upon the parts of rulers to eliminate the practice with penalties or fines. Tobacco, both product and plant, followed the major trade routes to major ports and markets, and then on into the hinterlands. The English language term smoking appears to have entered currency in the late 18th century, before which less abbreviated descriptions of the practice such as drinking smoke were also in use.Growth in the US remained stable until the American Civil War in 1860s, when the primary agricultural workforce shifted from slavery to sharecropping. This, along with a change in demand, accompanied the industrialization of cigarette production as craftsman James Bonsack created a machine in 1881 to partially automate their manufacture. Social attitudes and public health
In Germany, anti-smoking groups, often associated with anti-liquor groups, first published advocacy against the consumption of tobacco in the journal Der Tabakgegner (The Tobacco Opponent) in 1912 and 1932.