THE CIGARETTE AGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 953, 22 April 1930, Page 10

THE CIGARETTE AGE

THREE A DAY FOR WHOLE POPULATION SMOKING ON INCREASE Cigarette-smoking is still greatly on the increase, both in Britain and in America, according to the latest figures. Americans, it is stated, smoked 119,035,841.560 cigarettes last year—l3,ooo,ooo,ooo more than in 1928. This averaged more than 1,000 —or three a day—for every man, woman and child. This average of 1,000 a head of the total population Is roughly the figure for Great Britain and Northern Ireland also. In a recent estimate, based on an assumption that threequarters of the total tobacco consumed in 1924 —141,725,0211 b—was used in the form of cigarettes, Mr. A. F. O. Sperring, editor of the “Tobacco World,” gave the number of cigarettes smoked in the year as 38,293,999,560. Although this is vastly below the American figure, relative to population it is about the same. “Every modern device,” he declared, has been adopted to exploit the, seemingly, natural tendency toward eigar-iette-smoking, and the result of all this, and the tremendous increase in cigarette-smoking engendered by the war, has been to bring cigarette production up to a figure which seems almost incredible.”

For the 12 months ending last December. the total tobacco consumption in Great Britian was 147,531,7G71b, compared with 141,725,821 for 1928 and 138,159,900 for 1927. There has been a rapid increase since the war. In the year ending with March, 1924, the official consumption was 128,814,9171 b for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There has thus been an increase of nearly 20,000,0001 b in five years.

Cigarette-smoking by women is, of course, regarded as mainly responsible for the great increase since the war. The vogue of the cigarette goes back less than half a century. In 1870, one, James Bonsack, produced a machine, the first of its kind, which manufactured cigarettes at the rare of ISO a minute (the latest type turns out 1,200 a minute, the record output for one machine being about 530,000 in one day). First, the cigarettes were plain, then printed, then gold tip, then cork tip, which has become so popular today. With Ouida’s heroes the elegant smoking of a cigarette was a rare mark of luxury, and tlie tobacco they smoked was Turkish. It was the Boer War which really gave cigarette-smoking its big fillip, just as it was the Great War which made the custom practically universal. The function of the modern machine is not only to manufacture at express rate, but to extract all sand and dust in the interests of health and hygiene.