Reactions to Perceived Risk: Changes in the Behavior of Cigarette Smokers

Abstract

Since publication of the 1964 Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health [U.S. DHEW, 1964], Americans have been exposed to voluminous evidence linking cigarette smoking to a variety of serious illnesses. The Surgeon General’s report collected evidence developed in the preceding decade and a half and, interpreting that evidence, it made the first widely publicized pronouncement that smoking was casually linked to lung cancer and represented a major risk factor in other debilitating diseases. Since then, scores of scientific studies have supported and extended understanding of the relationships between smoking and illness, and a variety of mechanisms have been used to convey the basic health risk message to the public. On the national scene, most notable among these were the Fairness Doctrine antismoking messages broadcast on television and radio from 1968 through 1970 [Warner, 1979] and the publicity surrounding then-HEW Secretary Califano’s announced reinvigoration of the federal antismoking effort in 1978 [Califano, 1978]. For the last three years, new Surgeon General’s reports have provided a comprehensive compendium of knowledge of smoking and health [U.S. DHEW, 1979] and focused on specific issues of current concern: the health consequences of smoking for women [U.S. DHHS, 1980] and the quest for a less hazardous cigarette and smoking behaviors [U.S. DHHS, 1981].