AP WAS THERE: '64 US Report Ties Smoking to Cancer EDITOR'S NOTE - On Jan. 11, 1964, AP Science Writer Frank Carey covered the release of U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry's historic report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer. The report has been called one of the most important documents in U.S. public health history. While not the first to raise the alarm about smoking, it gave momentum to the push for tobacco controls. The surgeon general has periodically issued more smoking reports, and a new one is due out next week. Fifty years after its original publication, the AP is making this story available to its subscribers. WASHINGTON (AP) - Heavy cigarette smoking is the principal cause of cancer of the lungs and the larynx and a health hazard so grave as to call for remedial action, a blue-ribbon science panel concluded today. The nature of that action was not spelled out. However, Surgeon General Luther Terry of the U.S. Public Health Service said his agency will move promptly to recommend specific steps of the kind urged by the science group. Meanwhile, he told a news conference: "I would advise anyone to discontinue smoking cigarettes." The 10-man special advisory committee on smoking and health took 14 months to evaluate more than 8,000 studies of the effect of smoking on health. It undertook no fresh research but decided available evidence shows that cigarette smoking far outweighs all other causes of lung cancer and cancer of the larynx - in men and perhaps in women. It had no such clear-cut indictment of cigarette smoking in the area of heart and blood vessel disease or lesser aliments sometimes associated with smoking. But, broadly, the panel took the view that the more you smoke the more you risk early death. The special group was not requested to make specific recommendations for laws or regulations to offset smoking hazards but it concluded: "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action." After releasing the report, Terry declared that there will be "no footdragging" in seeking possible remedial steps. In another major conclusion the committee of scientists said: "In view of the continuing and mounting evidence from many sources, it is the judgment of the committee that cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the over-all death rate. " The report, which ran to about 150,000 words and several hundred pages, hit hardest at cigarette smoking as being what it termed a significant cause of lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and cancer of the larynx, or voice box. The committee was more reserved in linking cigarette smoking with heart disease and circulatory disorders, at least as to any cause-and-effect relationship.