With an annual toll of 40,000 American lives, the deadliness of secondhand smoke is now common knowledge. But it was only a few decades ago that puffi

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2025-01-06 22:00:02

With an annual toll of 40,000 American lives, the deadliness of secondhand smoke is now common knowledge. But it was only a few decades ago that puffing on a cigarette was defended as an act that affected only the smoker.

In the 1980s, researchers for the first time demonstrated that smoking can kill people who never themselves lit a cigarette. Those findings undercut tobacco industry claims that smoking need not be restricted, because smokers had accepted any health risk arising from their habit. Even if that was true, it certainly wasn’t for others forced to breathe polluted air.

Secondhand smoke galvanized the anti-smoking movement. “You’re suddenly not talking about suicide,” said Robert Proctor, a history professor at Stanford University. “You’re talking about homicide.”

By the end of the 1990s, smoking was banned on domestic flights as well as across an expanding number of bars, restaurants, and workplaces. Tobacco use tumbled: In 2000, 25 percent of Americans said they smoked a cigarette during the prior week, down from 38 percent in 1983.