Methodists Debate Smoking

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 14

Methodists Debate Smoking

Resolutions on cigarette smoking met a mixed reception in the North Canterbury Methodist Synod yesterday.

The synod recommended that the New Zealand Methodist Conference should congratulate the Health Department on making available a booklet on the dangers of cigarette smoking, and that the church’s department of Christian education should make Methodist people aware of the availability of the booklet It was also recommended to the conference that the church’s public questions committee be instructed to nrenare a statement warning Methodists of the dangers of cigarette smoking. A motion suggesting the Christian education department should be instructed to include information on the dangers of cigarette smoking in its educational programme was passed, but rescinded on the grounds that the department was already doing this. A motion suggesting an ap-

proach to the Minister of Health to ban cigarette and tobacco advertising was rejected almost unanimously, and a substitute motion suggesting the Inter-Church Council on Public Affairs be asked to look at this proposal was also lost.

Mr R. Mitchell, introducing the subject, quoted a report to the United States Public Health Service on the health hazards of smoking, gave figures on the increasing incidence of lung cancer discovered by the Christchurch mass X-ray survey team, and referred to a recent New Zealand survey which showed many doctors had stopped smoking cigarettes. The church should be interested to influence people against smoking, because of the misery caused by the diseases which had been proved to be associated with it, he said.

Motions asking for a statement from the public questions committee and for information from the Christian education department were passed. When the motion regarding cigarette advertising was considered, the Rev, W.

S. Dawson said the synod should not commit itself to a proposal to make representations to the Government unless the matter had been thoroughly investigated. Not “Mother Grundy”

Mr E. A. Crothall thought care should be taken not to give the idea that the church was a “Mother Grundy,” against everything in which people found pleasure.

Mr J. H. McKenzie was not happy over a request to the Government to interfere with advertising. The church had nr* asked for a prohibition on advertising lotteries, even though it disapproved of them.

The synod then rejected the motion on advertising: and when the Rev. J. D. rocott pointed out that the Christian education department had already published a leaflet on smoking, the motion intended for the department was rescinded.

The Rev. P. D. Ramsay then moved the motion congratulating the Health Department on its policy, and this was passed without dissent.