#surgeon-general

Big Tobacco's Cancer Cover-Up

On the morning of January 4, 1954, a full-page advertisement appeared in 448 American newspapers under the headline *A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers*. It was signed by the chief executives of the United States' six largest tobacco companies. The advertisement assured the American public that 'there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes of cancer' and that the industry would underwrite scientific research to find the truth. The advertisement had been drafted by John W. Hill of the Hill & Knowlton public-relations firm, hired by the tobacco industry's chief executives at a meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York on December 14-15, 1953. The strategy that the meeting produced — manufacture doubt about epidemiological evidence the industry already privately accepted, do this through industry-funded research that produced findings inconsistent with the public-health consensus, and continue to sell cigarettes to American smokers while doing so — would be sustained for forty-four years. It would be ended, in 1998, by the Master Settlement Agreement: the largest civil legal settlement in American history at $206 billion across 25 years, paid by the surviving tobacco companies to 46 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. By that point, an estimated 8 million Americans had died from smoking-related cancers, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory illness during the cover-up period.