“Fathers Should Discourage Children From Smoking”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 23

“Fathers Should Discourage Children From Smoking”

"The Press’- Special Service

AUCKLAND, Nov. 12. Fathers should discourage young members of their families from smoking, said Dr. E. G. Sayers, of Auckland, who was recently appointed Dean of the Otago Medical School, when he spoke to members of the Auckland Rotary Club recently. “It is a good thing if young people do not pick up a habit which is not going to do them any good over a lifetime and which may do them some harm.” Dr. Sayers said. He considered the evidence of the relationship between smoking and lung cancer was sufficient to warrant parents taking the action which he suggested. The smoking habit, he said, had not been questioned after many years “because a lot of cranks had been let loose in the world.” In Britain, the deathrate from lung cancer had doubled in 10 years and the disease was now responsible for one in every 18 deaths among men and one in 103 among women. Dr. Sayers conceded that pipe

and cigar smoking was comparatively harmless. An English survey had shown that the cancer mortality rate was higher for smokers than for non-smokers, higher among heavy smokers than light smokers, and higher among cigarette than pipe smokers. There was also a higher mortality among those who continued to smoke than among those who gave it up, according to Dr. Sayers. He said that heavysmokers had a death-rate probably 40 times that of nonsmokers. Probably one in eight of heavy cigarette smokers would die of the disease. It was twice as prevalent in Britain as it was in New Zealand and in the United States. Immigrants to New Zealand from Britain were more liable tp it than people born in New Zealand. Dr. Sayers said that one reason for the difference which had been suggested to him was that the American smoker left a longer cigarette butt than the English smoker. Air pollution had to be considered, but it did not account for all the difference. Bronchitis, he said, was 35 times more prevalent in Britain than in the United States, and this, combined with heavy smoking, could be a cause of the disease, but that was only supposition. Dr. Sayers said there was a great advantage in giving up smoking, and the habit should be discouraged among young people. That did not mean to say that otherwise, one in every eight New Zealanders would die of lung cancer. Whatever the figures for New Zealand were they were much less than in Britain.