Govt. ‘Should Help’ To Discourage Smoking

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31081, 9 June 1966, Page 10

Govt. ‘Should Help’ To Discourage Smoking

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 8. The £l6 million received by the Government in tobacco tax each year was no warranty for it to cancel its obligations to the nation’s youth, Mr T. F. Langley, president of the National Association on Smoking and Health, said in his annual report.

“Some of that £l6 million should be spent to underwrite the smoking and health campaign,” he said. The association did not want prohibition of smoking; just a complete ban on all forms of tobacco and cigarette advertising and a health warning on cigarette- packs, said Mr Langley. He said Sir Ernest Marsden’s work on polonium as a cause of lung cancer and his attempt to produce a special filter to remove it from tobacco smoke had been examined.

“We judge it to be sterile of useful result,” said Mr Langley. “Its main premise, namely the relationship of lung cancer to radioactive polonium, is mere speculation.”

The polonium - cancer link had not been substantiated, he said. Mr Langley said the association’s house-to-house canvass in 1965 had been very successful.

It showed that 90 per cent of non-smokers thought the habit harmful, 70 per cent of

the smokers thought smoking harmful, 92 per cent were in favour of an educational campaign to influence the youth not to start, and 82 per cent were in favour of a ban on tobacco advertising.