Existing comment:
Facing Facts
Not permitted to smoke cigarettes while recovering from a heart attack in 1959 helped Herblock to quit smoking. At first reluctant to urge others to stop smoking or avoid starting, the cartoonist came to realize that "with the health hazards increasingly obvious and tobacco companies showing a callous irresponsibility," the issue warranted attention in his work. His chilling scene of the Grim Reaper offering a smoker a light drives home the life-threatening hazard posed by the habit, then estimated to be responsible for at least 125,000 deaths a year according to a 1965 government agency report. |