Cigarette Smoking Increases

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30955, 11 January 1966, Page 14

Cigarette Smoking Increases

[By FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P A. special correspondent.l WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 Americans, like a lot of other people, still insist on living dangerously. From the first day of the New Year every cigarette manufacturer has had to print on every package of cigarettes sold a notice that smoking them may be hazardous to health. At the same time it was shown that more people smoke more cigarettes than they ever did before.

The story is the same on the nation's highways. Speeding and driving dangerously because of alcohol consumption helped set a new record for deaths on the highways over the Christmas and New Year holidays. This was in spite of warnings on every radio and television programme in the nation of the hazards of the roads. The two holiday week-ends meant well over 1200 funerals of traffic victims and hospitals filled with vast numbers of injured.

So prosperous is the funeral 1 business that in many areas ;owners of funeral parlours offfer free ambulance service for the sick and injured. When the United States Surgeon-General issued his report two years ago that smoking had been linked with lung cancer and heart disease it created a newspaper uproar—and the nation dropped its jcigarette-smoking by a puny 2 per cent. But it quickly recovered itself and in less than a year had turned that 2 per cent minus into a 3 per cent plus. The year 1965 was, for smoking as for so many things, the “greatest year ever” and annual consumption is now running at better than 130 billion cigarettes a year, which works out at about a pack of 20 per day for every man, woman and child in the nation and in addition there are

the cigar and pipe smokers who continue to puff away. One writer on the subject says it is apparent that the Government's findings and medical warnings have had no effect and “habitual smokers are either unwilling or unable to give it up.” No wonder that in 1965. the [greatest “smoking year ever,” [the shares of cigarette and (tobacco manufacturers rose steadily through the year—to the ( disgruntlement of i many holders of such[ ! stocks who panicked in; [ 1964 and sold out when: the Government warning about the dangers of smoking was first published.; I Over a period 1 have asked! I many people why they go on! [smoking. A few cynics simply Isay they enjoy it and anyway lone has to die of something. ■ Some say they wish they could give up the habit but find they cannot and so run the risks. Others say they use only filtered cigarettes and then smoke them through a holder with a changeable filter and that seems insurance enough. Still others say they have “cut down" and doubtless > they do—for a week or two. [But the thinking that seems to run through all minds is .that only a percentage of [smokers get lung cancer and ! although it can happen they I believe, or hope, it will not be I themselves but “the other I guy.” Cigarette smoking seems [definitely here to stay—and to increase.

The cigarettes with the printed warning on the side of the package comes after a bitter Congressional fight that continued for just about two years. The law now says such a warning must appear. Odd as it may sound, this requirement became law largely on account of the lobbying of the cigarette industry. The industry fought for the lesser of two evils and won. Because of that printed warning the law says there shall be no 'other action by the Govern-

ment to interfere with the l manner of marketing cigar-[ ettes for a period of three j years and a half. This prohibiting clause means that the Federal Trade Commission cannot interfere with cigarette advertising: the F.T.C. cannot prohibit advertisements it considers misleading: nor can it require manufacturers to insert the warning “hazardous to health” in their advertising—for three' and a half years at least. The F.T.C. had wanted a warning; [in advertisements that cigar-| [ette smoking “may cause j I death.” | No manufacturer wanted to | [advertise itself as a merchant of death and the industry; [fought for and got the warn-; ing on packets “hazardous to: ; health.”

However, the industry is going to use those three and a half years by inculcating self-discipline. It had hired a former State Governor who also is a lawyer to formulate an advertising code. His office has been operating quietly over several months and has been instrumental in changing the content of thousands of advertisements which are submitted to his office before being used in the press, on radio and on [ television. Advertisements now con[centrate on the pleasure and flavour of the smoke, not on the absence of harmful inIgredients and so on, and it I is noted that noted athletes are no longer asked to “spon[sot” a certain cigarette. Arnold Palmer, the famous [golfer, was such a sj>onsor and the implication of such advertising was that one could smoke and still be a champion of this, that or the other sport. ! In addition to this controlled advertising the industry is putting millions of its profits into research, contending that cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer has not been proved. It hopes that research will enable them to

remove all harmful elements from cigarettes. Judging by the statistics the public does not really consider the matter proved either and they are cheerfully breaking open packets that say “Hazardous to Health.” As for myself I smoked only five cigarettes in writing this story. SWISS SALE.—A Swiss firm has sold to Algeria three gas turbines for use on an oil pipe-line project.