Tobacco Documents Online

Institute Newsletter RREFARED~.FOR~TOUR INFIORMATION~BY TNE'.~ INSTITUTE',STAFF' 1T76. K STREET; N.W„ WASHINGTON, D.C. 20006: •~ 266-8134', Number 98 May 13, 1974 MDIA SUSSKIND, whose talk show still appears at 11:30 Sunday nights:in New York and is syndi- cated elsewhere to Metromedia stations, hosted a smokingrhsalth,dis- cussion,among Banzhaf of ASH, Braren of Consumers Union„ Kornegay of TI andl Young, aiSouth Carolina Cbngressman and' tobacco grower. Mostly, it was arguments and railsedlvoices and interuptions, Susskind siding, against tobacco, ending with Kornegay tellling'Banzhaf'his charges against tobacco are'baseless and slanderous, and Banzhaf responding, "Sue me!,N CBS-TV'S MORNING NEWS also gave Banzhaf and Kornegay each a minute.: The former said "more and more non-smokers are getting sick and tired, literally, of being, forced to breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke."' Said Kbrnegay: "Every government agency. ..that has looked into this question of the,danger of the health of a,nonsmoker., .. has concluded that the smoke of the smoker has no signifi- cant impact. . ." WETA-TV' (Public Broadcasting System) reportedlin Washington on lobbying andinoted the recent "victory" by Nader and Banzhaf over the tobacco indListry'and the nation's bus companies because the Interstate Commerce Commiission limited smoking to the rear 20% of interstate buses (News- letter 97). Commented narrator Jim Lehrer:: "As for the smokers of Ameri~ca, it's another'step in a narrowing world that is being made smaller and smaller every day by no-smoking signs, but it may accom- plish what the Surgeon,Generall's report, antismoking TV commercials and warnings on cigarette packages haven't been able to do, and that's simply to get people to quit smoki~ng., Before long it's just going to be too much, trouble to find alplace to do it anymore."'

-2- "THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY has unfortunately not always:been the: voice of validity."' Thus Seltzer of Harvard characterized scientific pronouncements in a letter to New Scientist, pro- viding data he said do not support Doll's conclusi~ons th,at. smoking,causes lung cancer. COLUMNIST William Clark, Portland, Me. Press Herald, seemed'fed up wi~th, antismokers. He wrote, "It must be terrible to want so sincerely to save people from themselves and then find that the people dbn't want to be saved."' He went on: "The last absolu:te,truth, I heard about smoking came from my father. Bobby Seekings and I had consumed a 101cent packk of Lucky Strikes in the fringe brush after school. When Ii came home for supper, my father said, 'You've been smoking.' I said,, 'Who? Me?,' He said,, 'Yes,, you. You smell like a poker game. Now I'm going to show you what happens to boys who smoke.,' He shouldihave added',, '. .. when,they get caugh,t,' but otherwise his case was solid. Ii foundiout what happened.. There was no question,about it, no doubt whatsoever., You prove that cigarettes cause more lung damage than car exhausts and wind blown city dirt as positively as my father proved that they cause seat warmingi andi Ii' 11 go along. " "TYPE A,BEHAVIOR AND YOUR HEART"'is a new book reflecti~ng the research~, knowledge and hunches of Friedman and Rosenman. New, Yo:rk Post ran it in seriall, digest form.. Said one arti- cl's:, "Like 99 of'every 100 physicians, we are dead certain that smoking is responsible for well over 95 per cent of all lung, throat,, anditongue cancers, as well as for a very great percentago of the crippling cases of emphysema,." But,as for heart disease, their specialty? They view those who talk of cause-and-effect, without,noting;anomalous statistics, as "lackingi in candor" about smok,ing, which:, at worst, is only a"moderate arterial insult." TERRY told Co-Ed magazine that while his 1964 smoking-healthh advisory committee was split on the question of whether smok- ing ils addictive (it found it wasn't), "'I think the evidence since then has clearlly indicatedlto us that it is an addic- tion." He dlidn"t specify the nature o:f the evidence. RESEARCH and others have A,HUGE GOVERNMENT STUDY has reported that death rates from heart diseases, peptic ulcer declined over the past two:decades while deaths re- lated to respiratory ailments,, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, acci- dents, suicides andiother causes have increased. Inia special to the. New York Times, science writer,Harold Schmeck said the study, con- ducted by HEW's National Center for Health Statistics, involved exam- ination of every death,cer:tificate, 33,637,548, recorded i~n the U.,S. in the past two decades. While the researchers admitted that the trends were inexplicable, they said they expected them to:continue throughout the 1970s.

-3- IF A RESPIRATORY PATIiENT' is a smoker, will doctors look more carefully for lung cancer,, find it more often, and thereby bias the statistics a:ssociating,the ailment wiithismokiing7' Y'es,, said Feinstein of Yale in a paper read to the Associ- ation of American Physicians. Tracking the records of 1,268 lung cancer patients in two New Haven hospitals, he found that the greater the smoking history, the more likely sputum pap smears were to be ordered, especially in men,. He voilced "suspicions that cigarette smoki~ngimay lead more to the di- agnosis of,lung cancer than to the disease itself." TILLACK,: ROSAI AND'VERVYNCK reported in the Journal of the National Cancer In,stiitute onione aspect of their tobacco-industry-supported pro- jject at,Washington Univ.:~ Despite their sophisticated methods, they've been unable to identify any tumor-specific glycoprotein antigens in the cell membranes of lungicancers. ANOTHER STUDY reporting association between parents' smoking and childi7en''s respiratory symptoms appeared iniBritish Medii- cal Journal. After surveying,most children in seven grade school's in one town,, researchers said respiratory symptoms in parents corresponded with, amount smokedlandlwere reflected' in their children,, perhaps because parents" illnesses were transmitted., But, they addedl,, "passive inhalation of ciiga- re:tte smoke by the child has not been shown to have an ilm- portant effect. . ." PART OF A MEETING of researchers in the National~ Heart-Lung Dnstitute's $,98 million "Mr. Fit"'project was public. During that part questions were raised as to whether the 1I2,000 healthy volunteer men being sough,t,, half of whom will be persuaded to reduce fat intake, smoking, and' take blood pressure reducing drugs, will be representative of the popula- tionlin, terms of personality. Govt. wants to findl out iif "control "' of "risk factors" can indeed reduce coronary heart disease. The project title, "Mr., Fit," is the acronym of its full tiitle,: "multiplle risk fac- tor intervention trial." Its stated goal suggests that frequent posi- tive assertions about effects of liess smoking on heart disease, for example, are,only assumptions. RUSSELL, an antiitobacco Br:iti:shipsychiatri.st, publiished re- sullts of an effort to prove smoke is dangerous to nonsmokers., He put 20 persons in,a 12 x 15-ft. room for an average 78'8 minutes, turned off,the ventilation, saw to iit that 80 ciga- rettes anditwo cigars were burned or smoked, andicouldn't get levels of CO in.the,air or the blood of the non-smokers sufficient to call dangerous. He said, "These were ad- mitted'ly extreme experimental circumstances." MIDDLE AGE MEN who smoke more than a pack a day, AP reported, are six times more likely to have strokes than their nonsmoking counterparts I 19

- 4- regardless of any other risk factors. These results, part of the long- range Framingham Heart Study and based on 196 stroke cases,, were pre- sente recently to the American Academy of Neurology in San Franciisco. Th~year study followed 5,184 men and women and concluded'that smok- was was a'~ignificant contributor to the risk in men of a common kind -str~ke. $2.40 A pack a. part BRITAIN's National Health Service director told'. a news conference that cigarettes should,cost of a program to get people to quit smokingi. Those who couldri' affort them,, he said, should receive free cigarettes if they first agreed to liisten to antismoking,lectures. BRITAIN'S'NEW LABOR GOVT6 hiked tobacco tax the equivalent of about five pence per pack, of cigarettes (under the new decimal money there are 10Q:pence to the pound), bringing protests from antismoking campaigners on the ground that pipe smokers would pay relatively more, discouuraging,switch- ing to what they regardlas a "safer" way to smoke. TAXES MONTANA Senate adoptedl a bill to require a "tar"-nicotine tax similar to that imposed by New York City. The tax would apply when the "tar" content exceeded 17 mg and,when the nicotine content exceeded 1.1 mg. Meanwhile, New York. Court:of Appeals upheld NYC"s tax, on the ground'that "The link between smoking cigarettes~ with a high tar and nicotine content and poor health is widely and officially acknowledged. ..,the price d!ifferential based on tar andinicotine content is clearly wilth,in the police power over matters pertaining to health,." NOtVSMOKER ISSUE SO FAR THIS YEAR, at least 30 states have had restrictive smoking bills introduced in their legisllatures.: Twelve of them have,adjourned without action!on the bills. Two (Nebraska and South Dakota) have adtipted Arizana,type bills) and one, Connecticut, has adopted a bill similar to Oregon's. The re- maining 15 legislatures have restrictive smoking bill's pending.. NASHVILLE council is considering a move to ban smoking in, all public builldings there after being prodded by the city's health~director who:said, "Breathing the air in a smoke- filled room is almost as harmful as smoking,." A,NEW' YORK COMMISSION evaluatingidrug'laws reported that the state"s $'23 million drug and'alcohol educatiion,program is "totally counter- productive,,""'may promote experimentation" and should be repealed. Iit partly blamedladvertising for an "'epidemic"'of alcohol abuse by youth, noting that the New Yorker (which:won't advertise cigarettes) Led'a1l magazines in beer-wine-liquor ad pages last year. The Com- mission said it "has not fully researched" smokiing-health, caliled!ciga- rettes "categpricaLTy harmful," made no recommendations about tobacco.