Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health

(CDC) The Surgeon General's report, The Health Consequences of Smoking (1), was released on May 27, 2004. This report provides an update, evaluation, and synthesis of evidence on the health consequences of active smoking and examines cancer, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and adverse reproductive and other effects.

The four major conclusions of the report are 1) smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and reducing the health of smokers in general; 2) quitting smoking has immediate as well as long-term benefits, reducing risks for diseases caused by smoking and improving health in general; 3) smoking cigarettes with lower machine-measured yields of tar and nicotine provides no clear benefit to health; and 4) the list of diseases caused by smoking has been expanded to include abdominal aortic aneurysm, acute myeloid leukemia, cataract, cervical cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, pneumonia, periodontitis, and stomach cancer.

Additional information about the Surgeon General's report and a free copy of the executive summary are available from CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at mailstop K-50, 4770 Buford Highway, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia 30341-3724 or by telephone, 770-488-5705 (press "3" for a publications specialist). Copies of the full report (stock no. 017-023-00211-2) can be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15250-7954; by toll-free telephone, 866-512-1800; or at http://bookstore.gpo.gov. The full report, executive summary, and the consumer-oriented publication, The Health Consequences of Smoking --- What It Means To You, can also be downloaded from http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco.

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