Making Carrot Tops Into Cigarettes

Chronicle (Levin), 1 March 1948, Page 4

Making Carrot Tops Into Cigarettes

TO reconcile a eraving for pigurettes with the burden of the tobacco tax has been a.most pressing personal probleni for 54-year-old Dr. Geoffrey A. Harrison, chemical pathologist at St. Tlarthplomew's Hqspital, London. N

Now he has solved it — at least to satisfy himself. After hundreds of experiments he has found that a good smoking mixture can he made from the untaxed leaves of cai-rpts and wild water-mint blended with the fluff of bulrushes. - "It tqstes fine, is smpoth fb mhaie, does not irritgte the eyqs, and is not pbjectionable to iny wjfe TU-a ^o».-smoker," he said. For the pipe smoker Dr. Harv rison has devised a fragrgnt mixr ture qf dried peach and willow leaves. He begap. his experiments the day gftpr Mr. Hugh Daitonapnounced his "Gasper" Budget last April. Fiqst he tr.ied the dried leaves of a pqck-rpse bush growing in his garden. "Th'ey tasted like friar's bal.sani," he writes in a report of his experiments published in the Chemical Products Journal. Tflen hq made a "cake" by folding up rhularb leaves and pressing therp in a. yice. ,fI ehain-smoked three pipefuls and got a bad pain iii' "the stopiach, so I did not try "it neat again,'' he sgys. Qrpoking the leaves of tomatoes 'and beetpoot made him feel siek. •

Potato leaves gave him a headache. This is Dr. Harrison's recipe for the cigarette mixture f — ' Strip the carrot leaves of stalky matter, and spread them out on paper tq dry. After two weeks slice Ihem up. Then to" every ten parts b'y bulk ' of carrot leaves, add one part of the dried leaves of waterrnint (a plant common' rouhd ponds) , and one part of bulrush fluff. Without tlie fluff the mixture spafks like a bonfire. A pinch of dried rhubarb , leaf wili cqimter any carroty taste. "Do not use garden mint ipstead •qf wild water-mint — its smoke is nauseating," says Dr. Harrison. {!And never try blending the^mixture witli tobacco. The result is awf'ul."" After six mopths' trial, E)r. Ilarrison now prefers his home-made mixture to: tobacco. But there is one snag. ''It . takes irje an hour to rqll 20 pf these 'cigarettes" and I need 50 a day. "But is my spare time worth pnly 3/4 an hour? . •' " ' "That is a question I still have to settle."