Contact: Mark Gottlieb 617-373-20026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Boston – The Surgeon General’s Report on Tobacco and Health released today demonstrates how far we have come in addressing the loss of health and loss of life caused by the use of the tobacco industry’s products. But after a half century, we still have tens of millions of Americans addicted to tobacco products that will cause the premature death of nearly half of them.
After 50 years, this has to stop. 
The time has come to aggressively deploy policies that will bring an end to the cycle of addiction, disease and death. In the Report, such policies are referred to as “endgame strategies.”
On September 19-20, 2014, the Public Health Advocacy Institute, in conjunction with the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium and Northeastern University School of Law will host a conference for advocates, health leaders and policymakers to do just that.
“50 Years After the Surgeon General’s Report: Accelerating Tobacco Endgame Strategies in the United States” will provide a blueprint to show what laws, regulations and policies can:
- Reduce smoking rates to near-zero
- Give consumers true freedom of choice by eliminating addiction from the equation
- Consign non-smoker exposure to tobacco smoke to the dustbin of history
- Finally complete the process that began with the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health
Speakers will include exceptional tobacco control researchers and policy leaders sharing both evidence-based best practices and bold new practices that comprise a true endgame for tobacco products.
Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Law, Richard Daynard, a contributing editor to the Report who also serves as president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute said of the conference: “We have the legal and moral authority to make today’s generation of teenagers the first truly tobacco-free generation. There is no reason for them to ever be addicted to tobacco products much less struggle with cessation repeatedly, as so many do. “
This meeting, the first of its kind in the United States, will highlight federal, state and local actions that will lead to an end to tobacco-caused addiction, death and disease in this country.
Re-imagining tobacco control as a means to truly end a public health problem that still kills more than 400,000 Americans each year is the next chapter in the movement that began 50 years ago when Surgeon General Luther Terry released the first Report on Smoking and Health.
The conference will be held September 19-20 (Fri-Sat) at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, MA. Details will be available soon at http://phaionline.org. If you would like to be notified when more information is available, please send an e-mail to moreinfo@phaionline.org.