Cigars and Public Health

In his historic 1964 report, Surgeon General Luther Terry concluded that “cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” 1 Time and again since 1964, however, we have had to address additional threats to health from other tobacco products. In the late 1960s, the major cigarette manufacturers introduced and widely promoted little cigars. Even though they were indistinguishable in appearance from standard filter cigarettes, they were exempt from the congressional ban on radio and television advertisements for cigarettes because their wrapping was made of tobacco, not paper. Consumption of little cigars . . .