Tobacco Documents Online

eans'are,smoking more cigarets than ever be• fore-with a vast new demand for the filter. tip kinds that have made . hardl j^. more than a• beginning.overseas.. . _ How oome?"Well; ' as one local physician hazarded, ••people_just don't b'elieve.ail theyy hear." Moreover, the idea seems to have got - across that whilba.statistical relationship b'e- tween lung cancer and I excessive smoking is established, a clinical' relationship ia not: , Whether or not figures Iie, the American To. -bacoo Institute is.not alone in pointing'ourtaeh things as a high incidence of lung cancer amang',certain kinds of ramsmokers, including a Canadian ~ sisterhood i of nuns, in contYast'to the 1ow'lncidenee of lung,cancer among',South Afrieans. much heavier cigar_• users than Americens or Englishmen. Dr. Clarence Cook IBttle of the industry. fiqaneed Tobacco Institute is directing far- r.nging s itCd~esM tobacco, tobacco smoke, _ and telAtedmattera, with hundnedbof'physi+ clans, chemists, biochemists, and, others en+ gaged therein.. If therearee caneer~inducing.g elements in cigarets. the hope is, to isolate . them and then eliminate or' neutralize them Itheprecisevalue.of, tilters.has not yet been, determinedl. - Some clinicians and cancer specialists sugt g•st. that excessive smokingmay' not be a causative factorr per sr, in cancer, burt instead a psychasomatic tactbr--ti•,, ~wmntom or svrt Springfield, Ohio tManh 3iA _1a_6 P__ --- ; Cancer--And What Kind' Of Smokc?' 11te latest manifestation ot English,.tivle mass hysteria is the cigaret scare now rippling through the country. For reasons not'entirely i~,°., dear,, British medical men have only' just ;". started to.raiaeo the wind aboutthestatistical correlation between "heavy" cigaret smoking (defined as more than a pack andi a half a day) and lung cancer. The ripples have washed clear across the Atlantia to U. S: atock ex- ehanges., xiteretobaccoe compatry, securities ~ look a bit damp at the moment. The same commotion in the United States ~" tome years ago reaehedla climax of'sorts in O, 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- an underlying predisposition lo cancer, In some people_ An even moree pimvcativee suggestionn is that the eancer-cigaret relationship i.; reall•y a triad, with the third element being atmospheric pollution. (This mighfexplaimthe far lower incidence of lung cancer among the very heavy smokers,of breeze-clean Jotuunes- burg than among the moderately heavy'smok- era' of smog-laden Lattdan.) . . It Is easier, of course; to inveighagatnst cigaiet-smoking than,to do something about titmosptieric pollution Indeed, even where something is being done about the latter-as in Ios Angeles and New York-discouraginglyy little progress is being made. 7he latest re- port from the West Coast is that the anti;smogg device being,fitted to automobile exhausts i% not working out at all well. .Manhattan's smoke-abatement program is a slow-motion business at.best. ' Some.physicians havenotedithat the statis- tics on lung-cancer mortalitynow reflect much improved~diagnostic procedures; which makes for a further.r degree,of uncertainty in any pure- , ly statistical analysis of.the.cigaret-caneer re- latianship. Cigaret' smoking did not become widespread until the First World War; before then, many deaths attributed to "consump• tion" or other ambiguous causes mi'ght noww be diagnosed as.lungcancer;,and if',so~thatwrould make the statistical I coincidence even shakier.' Of more immediak eoneern is the fact'that eourdless people who die of lung cancer every year did not use tobacco in any form. 7fius if cancerreseareheta, turo up canclusive evi- denceof'aa9nieal relationshipp between that disease and at.mospheric .. pollutiona anti-pollu- tion measuress would at once become a.majora medico-political issue. The big and as yetumesohred quesCion... therefore„ may be whether lung cancer is clinieallyrelated not to,tobaeco.smokc but too chimney and exhaust-pipe smoke. If so a cen- tury of indushdalization and mechanization could be Identified . as the pnme:source of the ' evil.and the prime clue to methods of'.allevia-tion. ADVERTISER Montgomery, Alabama April 11, 1962 T1Ie Smoke' Clears In Britaon Britain's antl-cigaret campaign, led by' the redoubtable Royali Co1- lege of Physlcians, is surprising everyone with ltb effectlveness. Ignoring all the toes tllry, wouldl have to step on, the doctors latirtched a massive program to educate the public,to the danger of lung cancer, which a nlne-man, Royal College' team, concluded uneQulvocally to be'e a major rlsk; of smoking. T4teir re- port, Smoking And Nealtk, Is ab'out' to go`tnto-tts fourth priftting. The book, whlch costb only a few centsi more than a pack of cdgarets, avoids morallting but It does warn ln clear language stripped of' medlcal jargon. Thousands of,Britons have alteady given up' the weed, although the campaign began just,recently. Some tobacco shops report drops as high as 40% in cigaret sales. Consump- tlon of anti-smoking pills has soared. But the rea1, test may come when Lent ends. Some Btltons believe their fellow citizens are only ' giving fore- bearance a trial run during thld period and will return to thelt old fatallsttc ways. Bomathing ]ike that' happened 1t1 this country at the peak of the lung, .cancer scare a few'years ago. Many quit smoking or cut down, only to reeume wtth,a vengeance after they had subdued their feara. = a. .