It's been 62 years to the day since a definitive link between smoking and lung cancer was made public, confirming what experts had feared for decades.
The United States government report clearly identified the significant public health risk to both smokers and non-smokers, and became a catalyst for major policy reform.
Over the past six decades a lot has changed, including widespread smoking bans and education campaigns.
Anti-smoking campaigners had long been trying to shift the tide away from the hugely lucrative tobacco industry, but progress was slow.
The comprehensive 1964 report put a new impetus on governments to act, due to some staggering statistics, not least that cigarette smoking was responsible for a whopping 70 per cent increase in the mortality rate of smokers.
The United States Surgeon General Luther Terry officially released the report at a major press conference in Washington on January 11, 1964.
Here's how the ABC in Australia covered the groundbreaking report and its aftermath in 1964.
"In this age of the ashtray, where there's smoke, there's finance," the journalist said, while viewers see a production line of cigarettes.
"Australians are among the world's freest spenders on tobacco and cigarettes," the journalist explains.
At the time of the report Australia had a 55 million-a-day habit, and the industry was spending big on advertising.
So it continued to thrive "in the face of wide publicity for overseas reports that claim smoking is a hazard to health", the journalist explained.
Respected Australian immunologist and Nobel laureate Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet called for restrictions on cigarette advertising.
"The most important thing, I think, is to stop young people from starting smoking cigarettes," the respected scientist said in a 1964 ABC news report.
"How to do that, well I don't know but there are two or three things I think could be done: one is to diminish or abolish advertising.
"And what I would like to see is a good few of the well known athletes coming out and saying cigarettes are no good for youngsters."
Sir Frank went on to explain that people with public profiles should lead by example.
"I think we've got to have some emotional indication that the cigarette is a danger and is inappropriate for, well athletes or people who really want to have a status in the community."
In the following news clip an ABC journalist interviews young people about their cigarette habits and gets their reaction to the "new American report" about the dangers of smoking.
Also in 1964, a journalist asks people on the streets of Sydney how they feel about the growing anti-smoking campaigns.
As one man, with a cigarette in his mouth, explains:
"I think it's just a matter of choice. If a person wants to smoke and they want to die, let them smoke and die. If they don't, well give it up."
One woman used an analogy about befriending a killer.
"If a burglar comes in to kill you, you wouldn't be friendly with him, would you?" she asks the journalist.
"Well, tobacco is a killer. So why keep it going?"
At the end of the interview she can be heard saying to the journalist "I hope you don't smoke", and he responds "I'm afraid I do, sometimes".
"One of the most frustrating dilemmas facing Australian governments this decade is that of the tobacco industry and the anti-smoking campaign," the journalist explains.
"Now, in simple terms, the dilemma is this: many millions of pounds of government finance has gone into research and development to enable tobacco farms like this to flourish in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
"Yet, government finance from another budget has produced here in Queensland this sheath of anti-smoking propaganda.
"If everyone accepted this government-sponsored advice, then the tobacco industry would crash and the Commonwealth government would lose literally tens of millions of pounds in excise revenue each year.
"Now, in Australia at present, there is only a trickle of anti-smoking propaganda.
"But in Melbourne next week, health education authorities from all states and from the Commonwealth will discuss ways of stepping up the anti-smoking campaign on an all-out national level.
"Curiously enough, but quite coincidentally, Queensland - the nation's main tobacco growing state - also sponsors the nation's most vigorous anti-cigarette smoking campaign."
