Tobacco Documents Online

< SUi Springfield,, Onio March: 31, 19~~ 100,5014444 1 y Can-ccrAnd What Kind Of Smohc? The latest manifestation of F'iig.li'sh•!4tyle mass hysteria is the cigaret scar.e notiv Jphlin, tJu•ough the country. For reasons not entii-ely clear,, British medical men have ot>1y just started to raire the wind~ about the statistical'i correlation bet.ween "heavy" cigarnt smoking (define& as more than a pack and a: half a day) and limg cancer. The ripples have washed' clear across the Atlantic- to U. S. stock ex- changes, where tobacco company securities look a bit damp at the moment The same commotion in the United State.; some years ago reached a climax of sorts in 1956 and then more or less subsided. At its worst the U, S. cigaret scare was never so feverish as it is in Britain, and today Ameri« cans are smoking more cigarefs than ever be- fore-with a vast new demand for the filter- tip kinds that have made hardly more than a• beginning overseas. How come? "Well," as one local physician hazarded, "people just don't believe all they hear." Moreover, the idea seems to have got across that while a statistical relationship be- tween lung cancer and excessive smoking is established, a clinical relationship iS not. Whether or not figures lie, the American To- bacco Institute is •not alone in pointing out such things as a high incidence of lung cancer among certaim kinds of non-smokers, including a Canadian sisterhood of nuns, in contrast to the low Incidence of lung cancer among South Africans, much heavier cigaret users than Americans or Englishmen. Dr. Clarence Cook Little of the industry- financed Tobacco Institute is directing far- ranging s tt~c es-Ibil tobacco, tobacco smoke, and related matters, with hw,8reds cf physi- cians, chemists, biochendsts, and oti,zrs en- gaged therein. If there are cancer-inducing elements in cigarets, thL hope is to irolate them and then eliminate or neutralizP them (the precise value of iiiters has rwt yet been determined). Some clinicians and cancer specialists sug- gPst that excessive smoking may not be a causative factor per se in cancer, but insteadd a psychosomatic factor--1.o., onP wn,ntonr nt an underlyine predisposition to canc,er in somr. peorlF. An even more provocative subgestim) is that t1Dee canrrt•-eibaret relationship t~ really a triad, with the third elenrent being at.mospherie pollution. (This might explain the far lower incidence of lmib cancer among the very heavy smokers of breeze-clean Johannes- burg than among the moderately heavy smok- ers of smog-laden London. ) It is easier, of course, to inveigh against cigaret-smoking than to do something about atmospheric pollution. Indeed; even where something is being done about the latter-as In Los Angeles and New York-discouragingly little progress is being made. The latest re- port from the Vest' Coast is that the anti-smogg device being fitted to automobile exhausts is not working out at all well. Manhattan's smoke-abatement program is a slow-motion business at best. Some physicians have noted that the statis- tics on lung-cancer mortality now reflect much improve& diagnostic procedures, which makes for a further degree of uncertainty in any pure- ly statistical analysis of the cigaret-cancer xe- lationship. Cigaret smoking did not become widespread until the First World War; before then, many deaths attributed to "consump- tion" or other ambiguous causes might now be diagnosed as lung cancer; and if so that would make the statistical coincidence even shakier. Of more immediatP concern is the fact that countless people who die of lung cancer every year did not use tobacco in any form. Thus if cancer researchers turn up conclusive evi- dence ofi a clinical relationship between that disease and atmospheric pollution, anti-pollu- tion measures wou!d at once become a major medico-political issue. T,ae big and as yet unresolvcd, que%t.ion. therefore, may be whether lung cancer is clinically related not tn tobacco smoke but to chimney and exhaust-pipe smoke. If so a cen- tury of industrialization and mechanization could be identified as the prime.source of the evil and the prime clue to methods of allevia- tion. AD VEP,TI SER Montgomery, Alabama April 11, 1962 The Smoke Clears In Britain - Britain's anti-cigaret campaign, led by the redoubtable Royal Col- lege of Physicians, is surprising .everyone with Its effectiveness; Ignoring all the toes thiey would have to step on, the doctors Ialinched a massive program to educate the public to the danger of lung cancer, which a nine-man Royal College team' concluded unequivocally to be a major risk. of smoking, Their re- port, Smoking And Heaith, is about to go-fnto'its fourth printing. The book, which costs only a few cents more than a pack of cigarets, avoids moralizing but it does warn in clear language stripped of medical jargon.. Thousands of Britons have already given up ' the weed, although the campaign began just recently. Some tobacco shops report drops as high as 40% in cigaret sales. Consump- tion of anti-smoking pills has soared. But the real test may come when Lent ends. Some Britons believe their fellow citizens are only giving fore- bearance a trial run during this perlo6 and will return to their old fatalistic ways. - 6omething like that happened itL this country at' the peak of the lung , Cancer scare a few iyears ago. Many quit smoking or cut down, only to resume with a vengeance after they had subdued their fears.. R\1 t.. {ti3t,~A ';x~a4: ,~:;