Calls For Measures To Cut Smoking

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30338, 14 January 1964, Page 11

Calls For Measures To Cut Smoking

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

MELBOURNE, January 13. Sir Macfarlane Burnett, a Nobel Prize winner and director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, today called for a complete ban on cigarette advertising. He said that the American report on the effects of cigarette smoking confirmed what had been stated in the report of the British College of Physicians last year. He said there was nothing in the American report that had not been known for four or five years, but it was important because it was “official.” In Washington, some legislators hastily drafted bills and proposed hearings to determine what could be done as a result of the latest indictment of smoking as a prime cause of lung cancer and several other deadly diseases. Indications were that Congress, which must ultimately decide what to do, would provide more money for research and education to inform the public of the dangers of smoking. Expressions of alarm and concern greeted the report of the Surgeon-General’s advisory committee but many Government and Congressional sources believed the report itself would do little to change American smoking habits. Pending “remedial action,” as proposed by the committee and recommendations to President Johnson, Representative Harold Cooley (Democrat, North Carolina) proposed immediate construction of a 5,000.000-dollar Federal research laboratory in the heart of his tobacco-growing State to discover ways to make smoking safer. Senator Lister Hill (Democrat, Alabama), chairman of the Senate Health Subcommittee, noted that tobacco growing is the economic lifeline of several Southern States and Congress would 'certainly have to carefully consider” this factor in any new legislation. Senator Maurine Neuberger. announced last night that she would introduce two bills next week to give effect to the report. Several bills have already been tabled in Congress which would, among other things, require cigarette packets to be marked to show nicotine and tar content. The three major United States broadcasting networks have announced that they will review their policies on tobacco advertising. A small independent station at Concord, California, has announced that it is banning cigarette advertisements. Tobacco-growers in the South were confident that the report on smoking would have no lasting effect on their multi-million dollar business.

Polluted air is a more likely cause of lung cancer than cigarette smoking, according to a German report on smoking to be published soon. Professor Reinhold Poche, head of the pathological institute at the Duesseldorf Medical Academy, and chief of a team of scientists studying the effects of smoking on health for the last five years, said yesterday that the report would clash with the latest American and British reports on the subject. But he said tile team had concluded that heavy cigarette smoking definitely shortened expectation of life through other illnesses, mainly involving heart and blood circulation. Among the main air pollution factors likely to contribute towards cancer was the exhaust fumes of motor vehicles, he said. Those most vulnerable to cancer were motorists and people working in smoky or dusty atmospheres. “Naturally tobacco contains cancer-inducing elements, but these tiny quantities are insignificant in view of the abundance of cancerinducing elements,” he said.