In the closing credits of "Crime Alert", Alan J. Levi is listed as supervising producer, Todd London as co-producer, and April Raynell as writer. All three people performed those functions on this episode of Columbo (1971).
The second paragraph of the expose Budd Clarke hands over to Anders concerning Anders' involvement in pornography contains an in-joke: "This reporter has unearthed some of Mr. Anders earlier work which, if nothing else, graphically demonstrates the shortcomings that he has had to overcome to achieve his current success in the media."
This was the second time that George Hamilton played a murderer in Columbo (1971). He previously played a murderous psychiatrist in A Deadly State of Mind (1975), which coincidentally a dog is used as evidence that implicates the killer's location at the time of the murder, also in both episodes he drives a late model Mercedes.
Columbo's car is a 1959 Peugeot Model 403 convertible.
At 15:23, we see a slightly modified US Surgeon General's warning which inspired the title of this episode.