(The School Committee recognized Makai McClintocklast week for his award-winning essay.)

Duxbury High School senior Makai McClintock won first prize in the Senior Historical Paper Category at the Regional National History Day Competition held at Brockton High School last month. He went on to place fifth in the state National History Day Contest which promotes historical research by high school students through archives, interviews and original documents.

McClintock’s essay entitled, “Protecting the People: Dr. Luther L. Terry and the 1964 Report on Recreational Tobacco Use.” This was the report that for the first time put the federal government’s imprimatur linking smoking and lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other ailments.

The author writes that on Jan. 11, 1964 -- the date of Dr. Terry’s announcement -- no one would have defended polio or tuberculosis. But tobacco’s detritus of health problems was protected by theretofore successful efforts by tobacco-product producers to cover up the increasing evidence of tobacco’s health effects.

McClintock calls the immediate impact of the Surgeon General’s Report “underwhelming.” Dr. Terry nonetheless created an awareness, and began a movement that would radically revise most Americans’ attitudes about smoking. In 1964, the typical high school faculty office was a smoke-filled room. Students were not allowed to smoke, but they naturally did as their elders did, not as they dictated.

Today, tragically, some teenagers still start to smoke. But their numbers are vastly reduced. Dr. Terry’s principled stand helped turn a smoking nation into an essentially anti-smoking nation.

McClintock’s essay came about at the suggestion of DHS history teacher Jack Kennedy. The topic of this year’s competition was revolution, reform and reaction in history.McClintock chose Dr. Terry’s truth-telling about tobacco partly in tribute to his grandfather, David DesRoches, who died of lung cancer on Feb. 8, 2011. McClintock dedicated the essay to him.

Next year, McClintock will attend Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.