This issue of MMWR focuses on the adverse effects of tobacco
use on the public's health and on efforts to reduce and prevent
those effects.
On September 25, 1990, The Health Benefits of Smoking
Cessation: A Report of the Surgeon General, 1990, was released.
The major conclusions of the report are: 1) smoking cessation has
major and immediate health benefits for persons of all ages and
provides benefits for persons with and without smoking-related
disease; 2) former smokers live longer than continuing smokers;
3) smoking cessation decreases the risk for lung and other
cancers, heart attack, stroke, and chronic lung disease; 4) women
who stop smoking before pregnancy or during the first 3 to 4
months of pregnancy reduce their risk for having a
low-birth-weight infant to that of women who never smoked; and 5)
the health benefits of smoking cessation substantially exceed any
risks from the average 5-lb (2.3-kg) weight gain or any adverse
psychologic effects that may follow quitting.
An executive summary of the report will be published as an MMWR
Recommendations and Reports on October 5, 1990. Additional
information is available from the Public Information Branch,
Office on Smoking and Health, Center for Chronic Disease
Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC, at (301) 443-5287.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML documents published before January 1993 are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.
