Those label warnings you see on cigarettes today – the ones that give the Surgeon General’s warning about cancer and respiratory diseases – were not always around. Despite medical findings linking smoking to heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses, cigarettes were on prominently advertised. Many of the early television and radio shows were sponsored by cigarette companies, and publications displayed ads tying in celebrities far and wide to various brands. By the middle of the 1960s the tide began to turn, as the Surgeon General’s committee found smoking an issue in need of remediation.

On this day July 27, in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, mandating the use of warning labels on cigarette packs. The Federal Trade Commission had first recommended such a move, but had no power to make it compulsory.

Four years later a follow-up act restricted the advertising of cigarettes to print publications only. Any electronic medium subject to control by the Federal Communications Commission  was forbidden to carry cigarette advertising. And print publications themselves had to display the same warning labels on their ads as they put on the cigarette packs.