Dr. Gene Luna represented the University of South Carolina at a National Smoking Awareness Press Conference at the White House on Friday morning. USC was mentioned by Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, during the press conference for its recent campus-wide tobacco ban.
“We need the engagement of young people,” Sebelius said. “We’ve learned what it takes to end the tobacco epidemic and provide the way for a smoke free generation.”
This marked the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General’s Report. The conference stressed that while there has been a significant amount of progress made over the past fifty years to reduce the use of tobacco and the negative side affects affiliated with tobacco use, there is still much more work to be done.
Since the first Surgeon General’s report, which was published in 1964, more than 20 million Americans have died due to smoking. The original report showed scientific evidence that inhaling tobacco smoke, specifically from cigarettes, is deadly.
The new Surgeon General’s report was released on Friday, which added on to the list of diseases which are caused by tobacco use. As the Surgeon General went down the list of new findings, he emphasized that “enough is enough.”
“We are still finding ways that tobacco maims and kills people,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new report has found that for the first time that women are just as likely to die from tobacco use as men are. It has also found that smokers today are more likely to develop lung cancer than ever before. Additionally, there are now 13 types of cancer believed to be linked to the use of tobacco. The report also came to the conclusion that smoking can cause diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and immune system weakness, risk of tuberculosis, impaired fertility, erectile dysfunction, and age-related macular degeneration.
Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, the current Surgeon General, stated that factors such as education, income, and socioeconomic status affect how hard the United States is hit by the tobacco epidemic. About $300 million are spent on tobacco products a year.