WAR MAKES TOBACCO SLAVES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 80, 20 July 1942, Page 5

WAR MAKES TOBACCO SLAVES

NAILS IN HITLER'S COFFIN Once upon a time tobacco smoking was either a pleasure or a pernicious habit. Now it is a patriotic duty. Every cigarette is a nail (valued at about %d) in Hitler's coir in. Since we started to rearm in earnest —in April 1939—the duty on tobacco has been increased by ten shillings a pound. Sixteen months ago the dutj" was 9s (3d; to-day it has reached 19s (id. If these heavy taxes reduce our smoking, this Avar will go down in history as the first war which has not stimulated the use of tobacco since Raleigh tried his first pipe. Wars, indeed, have been the chief factor in moulding our smoking hab- ! its. In the odd colonial days, when we tried to make America a land of the unfree, tobacco came to be the chief commercial crop of the southern colonies of- North America, but the War of Independence paralysed the industry, and the plant began to be cultivated elsewhere, notably in the Spanish West Indies. During the Napoleonic Wars the United States tobacco industry was almost annihilated. Certain European countries, Germany, Austria, and Italy, began to grow tobacco, and have continued to do so—for home consumption. During the American Civil War the search for "substitutes" became intense, China, Japan, Hungary and other countries being pressed into service. Tobacco growing in Canada was extended, and the first attempt at growing tobacco in the Empire— outside the Americas—in Australia, would appear to date from this period.

The Napoleonic Wars burdened England with heavy public debts, to wipe out which import duties ! were imposed, or increased, on all products which might be considered luxuries. The tobacco tax had always been considered by Chancellors of the Exchequer to be both lucrative and justifiable, and the tax was raised from Is 2d to 3s per lb—making the duty 900 per cent ad valorem. At the outbreak of the South Avar in 1899 the duty was 2s Sd per pound, shortly to be raised to 3s. During the Great War of 1914-18 the rate was increased from 3s 8d per pound to 8s 2d per pound. Within the lifetime, of many smokers, the price of ten cigarettes has risen from 3d to 9d, and of an ounce of the working man's twist or shag from 3d to Is 4d, in re-< sponse to an increase in the duty from 2s 8d to 19s 6d per pound. The rise of the cigarette to popular favour seems also to be linked with wars. The first cigarette is said to have been made by an Egyptian soldier in" 1832, during Ibrahim Pasha's campaign against the Turks, and cigarette smoking was introduced into this country bj>- our soldiers returning from the Crimean War. Cigarette making was a hand operation until the end of the century, but the South African War gave such an impetus to consumption that it led to a great extension of manufacture by the recently introduced cigarette machine—and greatly softened the effect of the continued rise in duty. Whereas a good hand-maker will make 1300 cigarettes a day, a modern machine will turn out 1200 a minute! The war of 1914-18 led to an enorj mous increase in cigarette smoking. Not only among the Forces, but the habit also spread like a well-lit fire among women, I'n 1907 the average consumption of cigarettes was 217 a year. In 1924 the average man (or woman) smoked G9O cigarettes, a figure which jumped up to 1450 in 1930. Over 70,000,000,000 cigarettes were manufactured in 1935, about 1550 per head, men, women and ckildren. Last year's average was about 1600. In any event Britain remains a nation of human furnaces.