BRITAIN'S TOBACCO BILL

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 73, 19 December 1919, Page 5

BRITAIN'S TOBACCO BILL

£242,490,000 IN SMOKE IN TWO YEARS i ANTI-NICOTINE LEAGUE'S REPORT It is a curious irony thst tlie author of the original "counterblast." and the fiercest foe of tiAacco should have been the ancestor of tho smoking Kiiur of Prussia, who founded tho famous lab. ks'Collegium which, accord 1 ":? to Cnrlylc, was "a Parliament reduced to its simplest expression," and, instead of parliamentary eloquence, was, provided with Dutch clay-pipes and tobacco." The latest "counterbhst" is iiot a literary, but a strictly statistical, production, It has ber.i compiled by Mr. E; I'. Moncrieff, F.E.S.S., of Nowcastlc-nn-Tyne, honorary statistic : nn to the British AntiTobacco and Anti-Narcotic Loajuc of Manchester. Mr. Moncrieff deals with the years 1917-18' and his figures throw curious and instructive lights in our smoking habits and some results of them as iiiterrWd by the Anti-Tobacco Leapuc. Hero are the tobacco bills ot the nation' for the two years under review : ~ ' 1917 - lbs. Vnlue. £ Foreign manufactured tobacco ... 985,000 1,462,600 British manufachired tobacco ... 115,089,700 91,109,900 Duty free tobacco supplied to Army, Mavy, Military Hospitals and Merchant Ser- • vice 30,111,000 G,9C5,700 Total 152,215,700 99,538,200 Pipes and other . appliances 4,S3I),WKi 1918. lbs. Value. £ ■ Foreign manufactnred tobacco ... 1,738,000 3,197,000 British manufac- \ • tnred tobacco ... 117,401,900 tt8.831.000 Duty fre? tobacco supplied to Army, Navy. Military Hospitals, and Merchant Service «,G98,M0 11,734,200 . Total 1 lfii,B3S,Soo . 133,753,100 Ot ':' r .: WerjKH) From these figures it will be seen that the consumption (if tobacco in 1918 increased over 1917 by 12.023,1001b., or 8.29 per cent, while the extra cost was .£34,214,900 or 34.37 pur cent. The total expenditure for the two years was .E242,490,(100 a fiprure whi«h lends Mr. Jloncrieff to exclaim: "Has the nation gone mad over tobacco?"' Nor [or Uin'lumor.iry Hiiitistician of the British Anti-Tobacco" and Anti-Nicolinc League are the solaces of tobacco as described by the great 'smokers, from T?nloi?h to Tennyson, and including BarTie, Lamb, Byron, Thackeray, and Rnurjreon, who once, in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, on a Sunday ni?bt, declared: "I intend to smoke a «ood ci<rn.v lo the glory of God before I so to bed toTiiitht." Kntlier is Mr. Moncrieff of the school of Fourier, the French communist, who declared: "The. nation tli.it smokes perishes." Answering ihis own question. "Has the nation gone mad over tobacco?" Mr. Mnncrieff "Wlnteve.r protest may be made against such an assumption, it is certainly a form of lmul'ipss which will have to be very dourly paid for by Mie nation." . That our soldiers smoked lieavily in Flanders and elsewhere is notorious, and one company -f tlio London Eifle Brigade,, servinjr in France, even went so far as to make. Sir Walter Ealeigih their patron saint.

More women, too, have been enioking since the war than before, arid in the niitumn of lillfi—alMiough Mi\ Moncrieff does not mention this—it was reported that "Women are smoking nearly three times the amount they did before tho war, and, when id is remembered that tho civilian allowance is less than that of pte-war days, it is evident that someone mus*t go sliort."

There was, in fact, a tobacco shortage in the anlHimn of 191 G. and it was roundly asserted, that "tho increased popularity of tobacco nnionj; women contributes towards tho scarcity." '

On tliis question of smoking by women. JIY. r J[onc.ripff writes:— "If lilie women of the nation beeomo hiibitit.il sniokors—as they rapidly are <loing—what effect will it have nn tho fuliiVn generation? The late Sir W. B. Dicliardson answered this'nuery in 187!) as follows: "If a community of you Mis of both sexos, whose progenitors were finely formed ami powerful, were to be trained to tlio early practice of sinoking, and if marriage were to.be confined to the smokers, an apparently new and a physically inferior .race of men and women would be bred." •'

"This," comments Mr. Moncrieff, "in the danger that is now facing its," and lie calls on the medical profession to ■"face this formidable danger to the nation, and warn women especially as to the injurious effects of tobacco smokinf."

What have the women smokers and tine medical men to say about it?