Tobacco Documents Online

•THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE :' ;"Charleston, South Carolina Wsch~ 7, 1960 < • MASON CITY GLOBE-GAZETM Ma.son City, Iowa January 15, 1960 A DAILY NEWSPAPER at York,. Pa:., has announced a bar on tobacco advertising. Its decision is called " ~ 4yan ethical one," not wishing "to encour- ~age anyone to use something a high. t V' authority indicated might prove deeply harmful. That; of course, is one point of view. But it isn't necessarily the right point of view. To many fair-minded people it will seem, to be bringing in a verdict before the defendant has had' a chance to give his side of the case. While there is some impressive evidence that tobacco, or something that goes into cigarets, causes can- cer, ; or makes smokers cancer-prone, the proof of this is by no means com- .plete and irrefutable. Authorities are NOT JUST A NASTY HABIT Tobacco Is Believed ran quilizing Agent By David 31. Cleary They'te found that the smoke Science yriter of burning tobacco has an effect ANN ARBOR, bfieh.-\obody on the braimsomewhat similar to knows just why the babit of that of modern tranquilizing smoking tobacco got started: drugs, although much less potent . Spread of the practice through the ..' . civilized world has been charted, "REMARKABLE BRAIV re- but there has been no satisfactory spoases" have been found by Dr. explanation of its popularity. Edward F. Domino, an associate '. For many of us, it seemed that professor of pharmacolo; , when there was something restful aboutl he planted delicate electrodes in a "smoke" between periods of the brains of' dogs and then ex- work, and the sigiit of a man Posed the animals to tobacco smoking a cigar after a big "mea]' smoke. always seemed to present a pic- The reaction to" smoke Is ture of relaxation picked up by the olfactory And now ik turns out, accord- tng to medical researchers at the Unicersity of .lI i c h I g a n Medical School here, that we nerves, and carried to the por- tton of tbe brain believed to be the seat of the emotions, where unusually stroug electrical dis- ma,v have been on the right' charges were registered. tracfi ait the tiure. • 3fodern tranquiliziit- dru.cs af- divided on thee matter. Until"that time comes, most news- papers will believe it their.prime func- tion to report the truth from day to day, never to consider mere allega- tion to be the same as conviction. Such a course strikes us as being more in the spirit of democratic pro- cedure and free enterprise, more in the tradition of a free press than the policy adopted by the Pennsylvania daily. This, by way of background, is written by an editor who just 10 years ago decided on his own agaiiist the further use of tobacco in any form. If we were motivated by prejudice, we quite obviously would be in, the same corner with the York Gazette and Daily. feet the same portions of the brain, but do their work throueh the blood stheam rather than the olfactory nerves, says Dr. Dotn- ino. " . .- . . : I~' DOGS, THE reaction to smoke is quite sensitive, and re- sponses can be obtained with many different kinds of smoke. In 'addition to tobacco, the doctor burnt dried maple leaves, corr silk. and catnip. All the varieties of smoke pro- duced essentially the same gen- eral effect In brain cells, al- though Dr. Domino found that ">z>iioke trorn ordinar7 tubacc~ Is the least Irritating and the gentlest method ot; achieving the brain-stimnlatfng result." One of the chief criticisms that might be made of these experi- ments is that they were con- ducted with dogs..known to havee a highly. deiieloped " sense "of smell. Just as there are some kinds of cancer thaU-can be acti- rated in mice but not in men, this miebt be simply, a phenomenon of dogs, inapplicable to human be• ings. . . . DR. DONtiNO anticioated that csiticism, however. He and his associates have duplicated their tests in monkeys, whose sense of small is approximately a~ keen as that of a human being. The re- suits were essentiallv the same. The findings to date seem to open a new avenue for Investi- gation of brain action, Dr. Domino says. Continued tests will be conducted in the hope of learning more about our think- ing processes, our emotions, and our moods. r13irt Dr. Domino and his a<so- ciates have already performed a great semice. They've confirmed hat smokin ;. isn't ust a nasty that smoking isn't iust a nasty desiie of mankind to play with fire. Instead, ther'v e sho:ch that people who smol:e a cigarette to relax have some lo;icali reason for smokinQ: ,ince the el'fect on the brain, cells is a calmiii; onr. however sli;hL • . . 1\ PASSING. the researncrre have also verified another point. Our ancestors who Invented smoking. althou_lt they had no moderni trafiic jams, connnuter problems or phones to ansuer,, had their troubles too.