Tobacco Documents Online

f 0 THE NEW YORK TIMES December 28, 1966 THE' WASHING'DON POST' Washington, D. C. March 30, 1967 Cigarette Total Hits Record 541 Billion RALEIGH, N.C., March 29 (UPL)-Americans are smok- ing more cigarettes than ever before and would rather switch to filters than fight off the habit, statistics on 1966 ciga- rett'e consumption revealed to- day. A U.S. Department of Agri- culture report said Americans smoked 541 billion cigarettes in 1966-a 12.5 billion increase over 1965-and 68.2 per cent of the cigarettes were filtered. The report said that! 12 years ago filters were on only 9.2 per cent of cigarettes sold. The report listed total 1966 , production of UIS: cigarettes at 568.6 billion. Americans at home smoked 522.5 billion of those, while 18.7 billion were consumed by U.S. citizens overseas. Another 3.9 billion cigarettes were shippe&to U.S. territories a n d possessions, and the remaining 23.5 billion w e r e exporte&- to foreign countries. The per capita cigarette con- sumption for U.S. citizens over age 18 last year was 4290. The report said that was an increase of 31 cigarettes per person over 1965 consumption. The filter trend has resulted in profound changes at both the growing and marketing levels of the tobacco industry Growers previously received premium prices for a light, milder leaf. Tobacco buyers now prefer the heavier, full-' bodied tobacco, which givesf taste strong enough to pene- trate trate a filter. 1e6 3a4-zq q.5 Man-Made Epidemic In the year now drawing to a close, lung cancer, a rare disease fifty years ago, is taking the lives of approximately 42,000 men and 8,000 women. These grim statistics have led the nation's top advisory body on cancer, the National Advisory Cancer Council, to sound a new: warning against cigarette smoking, prob- ably the toughest on the subject yet to be made by a recognized group of experts in this country. It strongly recommends that more active steps be taken to call public attention to "the enormous man-made epidemic of lung cancer now extant in this country as a result of cigarette smoking." It points out, that lung cancer has increased tenfold among Adierican men in the last thirty years and blames this, rise on the cigarette. The report of. the National Advisory Cancer Coun- cil; which was established by law in 1937 . to advise the United States Public Health Service, is even stronger in its condemnation of cigarette smoking than the report of the Surgeon General's advisory committee three years ago. It' has been followed by' publication of a study of 55,000 men enrolled with the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, which reveals that cigarette smokers are twice as likely to suffer heart attacks as nonsmokers, although the mortality among the two groups is about the same. The Council's report cites a study of 250,000 white male veterans made by the National Cancer Institute in cooperation with the Veterans Administration. This found that cigarete smokers have a higher death rate than nonsmokers from lung .cancer as well as other diseases. And the American Cancer Society has. re- ported that the death ratc among 500,000 American women is five times as high among those who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day as among nonsmokers. Despite this continuing accumulation of evidence, the tobacco industry insists on its claim that the case against cigarettes is not proved. It fears that the anticigarette propaganda campaign has discouraged Investigators from pnrsuing research that might re- veal other causes for cancer. Of course research must go on; but the overwhelm- ing weight of scientific opinion here and abroad sup- ports the National Council's indictment of cigarette smoking as a danger to health. T 1003042995,1- 29 i