Preventive medicine
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One of the ten great public health achievements in the 20th century was turning the tide on one of the greatest public health disasters of that century: the tobacco use and related disease epidemic. The premature death and disease caused by tobacco can be considered largely as a side-effect of tobacco use behavior and the disease of addiction. ⋯ The behavioral factors are considered vital to understand and address by United States Food and Drug Administration and Surgeon General, as well as the World Health Organization in their tobacco control efforts. This commentary discusses key behavioral factors in the rise and fall of the epidemic, as well as some of those increasingly discussed as potential contributors to the endgame.