Antitabagismo no Brasil: da mobilização da comunidade médica à política de sáude pública (1950-1988)

Abstract

This present work analyzed the process that promoted the development of the Brazilian medical anti smoking collective under medical leading during 1950s decade, through the divulgation in national periodicals such as Brasil-Médico and Revista Brasileira de Medicina (RBM), of researches produced in England and USA connecting smoking habitsto lung cancer. Among those text authors and those periodical editors, it could be underscored the pulmonologists/phthisiologists that worked in the Policlínica Geral do Rio de Janeiro. These physicians were responsible for the propagation of a discourse against smoking habits in Brazil, in order to find support within medical community. Their placewithin the medical community and their participation in State administration contributed to reach such support. We observed that the strategies to make public some articles referring to these themes, the promotion of symposiums and the campaigns held by the physicians inthe Jornal Brasileiro de Medicina (JBM) about the harmful effects of smoking were important to the expansion of these collective. Those initiatives contributed to integrate new allies in the medical community and in other spheres, like the political sphere and the press. By means of the action of this medical collective, it was created the Portaria 655/GMand the Grupo Assessor ao Ministério da Saúde para o Controle do Tabagismo no Brasil (GACT). That group was responsible for the Programa Nacional de Combate ao Fumo created in 1986, when Brazil underwent an epidemiological change, in which chronic anddegenerative diseases became an issue of the public health policies. The Program also consisted of a landmark in the institutionalization of the struggle against smoking in the country. Therefore, this study tried to notice that the anti-smoking campaigns - by means of scientific popularization to other specialists and to laymen and the implement of governmental public health policies, legitimated in Brazil the relationship between smoking and illnesses, mainly, lung cancer.