Smoking in the 21st century

Abstract

Jean Nicot de Villemain (1530 - 1600) was a French diplomat who became famous for introducing tobacco to France. Little could he imagine the immense upheaval he would bring to future generations. Up until the early 1900's, smoking cigarettes was made to look glamorous and even had health benefits attributed to it. However, the link between smoking and respiratory diseases had been established back in the early 1900s in studies by European and American doctors but this remained a taboo up until the 1950s. As time went by, the evidence linking smoking as the cause of disease continued to accumulate and, what was a controversy in the 1960s and 1970s, turned into outright condemnation in the 1980s. Although the medical profession had more knowledge about the harm caused by smoking, the general public was less informed because cigarette manufacturers were doing their best to cast doubt on how true these "allegations" were. Mass legal action instituted in the 1990s led to the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 with US courts condemning major US cigarette companies to pay huge sums of money to the US government over a period of 25 years to compensate for some of the damage and expenses incurred in caring for the millions of people suffering ill health directly caused by smoking over the years. [excerpt]