Smoking And Cancer

Press, Volume C, Issue 29444, 21 February 1961, Page 3

Smoking And Cancer

Sir, —Recently you justifiably suggested that penalties for selling marihuana cigarettes might be too low. Eater you reported a review by a medical man of the increased mortality which follows prolonged addiction to tobacco cigarettes. The consensus of informed medical opinion throughout the world is now in no doubt of this association. Where reasonable evidence suggests certain practices may be a risk to health, reasonable people will take reasonable precautions. An addicted and unenlightened community would hardly sanction the same penalties for the marketing of tobacco as for marihuana, however logical that might be. The very least that it should do, however, is to refrain from encouraging the younger generation in these questionable habits. In the present state of our knowledge, therefore, the publication of advertisements aimed, even indirectly, at increasing the consumption of tobacco cigarettes by the young, must be regarded as an act of irresponsibility not only on the part of the manufacturer but by the radio and the press.—Yours, etc., H. R. DONALD. Feb. 20, 1961.