Health experts urge safer cigarettes

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33120, 10 January 1973, Page 11

Health experts urge safer cigarettes

f.V.Z. Press Association—Copyright LONDON, January 9. Two British health experts have urged the Government to act on research which has been done into making cigarettes safer, instead of concentrating on trying to make people stop smoking.

Cigarettes could be made; safer at once, though the safer cigarette might taste differently and perhaps cost the cigarette manufacturers! more, say the experts, writ-1 ing in the magazine. “Ecolo- ■ gist.” Drs Alan Chatelier and Robert Waller suggest that both the British and the American Governments have been reluctant to accept evidence. acted upon by other j governments, that it is artificial, or flue-dried tobaccos,; that are dangerous. Research in Britain, they . say, has shown that natur-l ally-dried tobacco, as used in pipes and cigars, is relatively harmless: and Soviet Union research has shown that the' smoke from Russian cigar-1 ettes. made from naturallycured tobacco, is in the same category.

; Official statistics show that lung cancers in Russia and Poland amount to only 6 per cent of the total, compared [with 26 per cent in Britain | East Germany is so convinced by the evidence that |she is now using a Russian system for identifying natur-ally-cured tobacco from fluecured tobacco, to make sure that no artificially-dried tobacco goes into her cigar [ettes. The experts add that the ; work on which present I theories about the danger of [cigarettes are based — the .death figures for smoking I doctors in Britain —- completely ignore the fact that the statistical findings do not [apply to countries like the Soviet Union. Poland. Spain, and East Germany. wher<peonle smoke just aWnuch ain Britain.