CARROT TOBACCO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 82, 16 August 1948, Page 8

CARROT TOBACCO

DOCTOR'S SEARCH • PROBLEMS' OVERCOME NO .TAXATION PAID To reconcile a craving for cigarettes with the burden of the British to.baccc tax has Ibeen a most pressing problem for 54-year-old Dr. Geoffrey A. Harrison, chemical pathologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. Now he has solved ti —at least to satisfy himself. After hundreds of experiments he has found that a good smoking mixture can be made from the untaxed leaves of carrots and wild water-mint blended with the fluff of bulrushes. “It tastes fine, is smooth to inhale, does not irritate the eyes, and is . not objectionable to my 'wife—a nonsmoker,” says Dr. Harrison. y To# the pipe smoker, Dr. Harrison has devised a. fragrant mixture of dried peach and willow, leaves. He began his experiments the day after Mr Hugh Dialton announc- -■* ed his “Gasper” Budget last April. First he tried the dried leaves of a rock-rose bush growing in his garden. ' “They tasted like friar’s balsam,” he wi-ites in a report of his experftuents published in the Chemical Products Journal. Then he made a “cake” by folding_up rhubarb leaves and pressing them in a .- vise. “I chain-smoked three pipefuls and got a bad pain in the stomach, so I did not try it neat again,” he says. Smoking . the leaves of tomatoes ’beetroot made him feel sick. Potatg leaves gave him a head- *• |icre. This is Dr. Harrlson/s recipe for the cigarette mixture M. Y 1 Strip the carrot leaves of stalky matter, and spread them out on n paper to dry. After two weeks slice them up. Then to every 10 parts of bulk of carrot leaves, add one * part of the dried leaves of watermint (a plant common, round ponds), and one part of bulrush fluff. Without the fluff the mixture , sparks like a bonfire A pinch of dried rhubarb leaf will counter any carroty 1 taste. .’“Do not use garden mint instead of wild water-mint—its smoke is ,nauseating,” says' Dr. Harrison. ~ “And never try blending, the mix-. > ture with tobacco. The result, is awful.” , After six months’ trial Dr. Harrison now prefers his home-made mixture to tobacco.- But there As* one snag. ’ ... “it takes-me an hour to roll 20 of these cigarettes and I need 50 a day. ’ “But is my spare time worth only 3s 4d an hour? That is a question • I still have to settle.”/