Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF LEGISLATION TO CONTROL THE TOBACCO EPIDEMIC
Graham in the United States (Wynder and Graham 1950) and that of Doll and Hill in
the United Kingdom (Doll and Hill 1950) provided irrefutable epidemiological evidence
on the grave health hazards of tobacco.
Following this ground-breaking research, two landmark reports linked smoking to
lung cancer and launched the anti-smoking campaign in earnest. In 1962, the first
report of the Royal College of Physicians of London (1962) established the association
of smoking with serious morbidity and mortality. In 1964, Doll and Hill published
their studies showing lower mortality among British physicians who had stopped
smoking (Doll and Hill 1964). And in 1964, the Advisory Committee to the United
States Surgeon General established a clear link between cigarette smoking and lung
cancer and other disabling or fatal diseases and pronounced cigarette smoking ‘a health
hazard of sufficient importance to warrant appropriate remedial action’ (U.S. Public
Health Service 1964).
In 1970, the World Health Organization began its long and courageous campaign to
translate the scientific evidence on the health risks of tobacco into programs and
policies to protect the people of the world against this scourge. In May 1970, the World
Health Assembly passed the first of many resolutions on tobacco (WHA 23.32).
Reading this resolution after 32 years of experience with tobacco control legislation, we
find this early policy remarkably prescient. It called for making the health consequences
of smoking the subject of World Health Day, urged countries to limit smoking,
recommended convening an expert group to propose further actions, emphasized
education of young people not to begin smoking, and suggested that the Food and
Agriculture Organization study crop substitution in tobacco-producing countries. The
many resolutions of the World Health Assembly that followed noted the indisputable
scientific findings on the harmful effects of tobacco use, condemned the aggressive
promotion of tobacco in developed and developing countries, and proposed new and
strengthened strategies to protect smokers and non-smokers.
Early legislation, 1890–1960
Early legislation concerned mainly prohibiting cigarette sales to minors, as in Norway
(1899), Japan (1900), Canada (1908), New Zealand (1927), and Scotland (1908 and
1937) (Roemer 1993).
Another type of early legislation consisted of bans on smoking in places of entertainment,
apparently designed to prevent fires. Examples of such legislation existed in
Alexandria, Egypt (1908), Sao Paulo, Brazil (1950), and the State of New Delhi, India
(1953) (Roemer 1993).
Legislation of the 1960s and early 1970s
Despite the wide dissemination of the findings of the 1962 report of the Royal College
of Physicians of London and the 1964 report of the US Surgeon General’s Advisory