Surgeon General reports: the missing one

In 1964 the American Surgeon General published "Smoking and Health",

the first of many reports about public health. By 2006 there were 43 of

of them . Of these 30 were related to tobacco. The rest concerned

other subjects such as osteoporosis and AIDS. A list of them can be

found at:

But one is missing.

At the time of the first report the Surgeon General had exercised his right to

commission the Bureau of the Census to survey the population and compare the health

of smokers, nonsmokers and exsmokers.The results were published in 1967

as`"Cigarette Smoking and Health Characteristics" with "William H. Stewart Surgeon General" on the title-page. The results were unexpected

and, it seems, unwelcome: the healthiest men and women were not the nonsmokers

but those who smoked 1 - 11 cigarettes per day. See:

Forty years ago when antismoking hysteria had yet to develop this didn't

matter too much. Today it very different: how can the message "there is no safe level

of smoking" be promoted when we have evidence - from the Surgeon General himself - that a few cigarettes are not merely

harmless but positively beneficial?

The solution is deceptively simple. "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out".

It has been plucked out. Go to the page listing reports of the Surgeon General

and you will find:

1971

The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General