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Beginning as early as the 1970s, the tobacco industry began to worry about the mounting evidence showing that nonsmokers as well as smokers suffer adverse health effects from secondhand smoke inhaled in bars, restaurants and other public places. Industry executives realized that the issue of tobacco's indirect effects posed a potentially greater threat to profits than the issue of its direct effects on smokers themselves. Once the public realized that cigarettes were also killing nonsmokers, anti-tobacco activists would press forward with increasing success in their campaigns to ban smoking in public places.
"If smokers can't smoke on the way to work, at work, in stores, banks, restaurants, malls, and other public places, they are going to smoke less," complained Philip Morris political affairs director Ellen Merlo in a speech to tobacco vendors. "A large percentage of them are going to quit. In short, cigarette purchases will be drastically reduced and volume declines will accelerate."<ref>[http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vzq81f00 Remarks By Ellen Merlo Vice President, Corporate Affairs Philip Morris USA at Philip Morris Vendor conference, Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City"], January 25, 1994. Bates Number 2044336068/6114.</ref>
Researchers have known for decades that secondhand smoke causes or exacerbates a number of health problems in nonsmokers, including heart disease, emphysema and asthma. In 1992, the U.S. [[Environmental Protection Agency]] (EPA) added to the list by publishing a risk assessment that designated secondhand tobacco smoke for the first time as a known cause of lung cancer. The tobacco industry's preoccupation with "sound science" emerged as it mobilized to fight the EPA risk assessment.
