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Abstract: 

Barry Goldstein narrates the decades-long history of public health efforts to discourage cigarette smoking. Given the 73% drop in adult cigarette smoking that took place between the 1960s and the year 2022, it is clear that this campaign, whose methods included media messaging, medical advice, school curricula, and legislation, among other methods, was highly successful. The author recommends that the same approaches that were successfully used to discourage cigarette smoking ought to be utilized by the movement to eliminate domestic violence (DV) and child abuse (CA). Just as smoking was shown to cause cancer and heart disease, the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences and deleterious health outcomes later in life offers a compelling argument to consider DV and CA as equally toxic to human health and well-being as smoking has been proven to be.

Keywords: Centers for Disease Control; American Heart Association; American Cancer Society; Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs); Financial and Health Effects of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse

Affiliations:  1: Attorney at Law.