the great american smokeout

What is it? For more than 40 years, the American Cancer Society has hosted the Great American Smokeout on the third Thursday of November.  The Great American Smokeout is an opportunity for people who smoke to commit to healthy, smoke -free lives – not just for a day, but year round. The Great American Smokeout provides an opportunity for individuals, community groups, businesses, health care providers, and others to encourage people to use the date to make a plan to quit, or plan in advance and initiate a smoking cessation plan on the day of the event. The Great American Smokeout event challenges people to stop smoking and helps people learn about the many tools they can use to help them quit and stay quit.

How did it begin? The Great American Smoke-out event has helped dramatically change Americans’ attitudes about smoking. These changes have led to community programs and smoke-free laws that are now saving lives across the country. Annual Great American Smoke-out events began in the 1970s, when smoking and secondhand smoke were common.
How has it helped? Because of the many individuals and groups that have led smoke-free advocacy efforts, there have been significant landmarks in the areas of research, policy, and the environment:
1977: Berkeley, California, became the first community to limit smoking in restaurants and other public places.
1983: San Francisco passed the first strong workplace smoking restrictions, eliminating smoking in private workplaces.
1990: The federal smoke-free law for all domestic flights of 6 hours or less took effect 
1994: Mississippi filed the first of 24 state lawsuits seeking to recuperate millions of dollars from tobacco companies for smoking-related illnesses paid for by Medicaid.
1994: ABC News reported for the first time that cigarette companies manipulated the nicotine in their products to cause and sustain addiction in people who smoke.
1994: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened an historic investigation into the tobacco industry’s manipulation of nicotine and targeting of children in advertising and promotion.
1999: The Department of Justice filed suit against cigarette manufacturers, charging the industry with defrauding the public by lying about the risks of smoking.
1999: the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) was passed, requiring tobacco companies to pay $206 billion to 45 states by the year 2025 to cover Medicaid costs of treating people who smoke. The MSA agreement also closed the Tobacco Institute and ended cartoon advertising and tobacco billboards. 2009:The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was signed into law. It gives the FDA the authority to regulate the sale, manufacturing, and marketing of tobacco products and protects children from the tobacco industry’s marketing practices.
​2017: More than 11 years after a federal court first ordered them to do so, the major U.S. tobacco companies began publishing “corrective statement” advertisements telling the American people the truth about their deadly and addictive products. Tobacco companies had to publish corrective statements in the nation’s top-selling newspapers from November 2017 to April 2018, according to the court ruling.  The court also required corrective statements to air on major television networks from November 2017 to November 2018. The American Cancer Society, along with other public health groups, played a major role as an intervenor in the Justice Department’s litigation against Big Tobacco.

As you can see, the American Cancer Society's Great American Smoke-out has already made a substantial impacts in the areas of environment, research, and policy over the past 40 years. We look forward to what it will accomplish in the future!