THE CIGARETTE AGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 May 1930, Page 7

THE CIGARETTE AGE

THREE A DAY AS AVERAGE.

Cigarette-smoking is still greatly on the increase, both in this country and in America, according to the latest figures (says a London paper). Americans. it is stated, smoked 119,038,841,560 cigarettes last year—l3,ooo,ooo,000 more than in 1928. This averaged more than I,ooo—or three per day—for every man, woman and child. This average of 1,000 per head of the total population is roughly the figure for Great Britain and Northern Ireland also. In a recent estimate, based on an assumption that threequarters of the total tobacco consumed in .1928—141,725,88211 b—was used in the form of cigarettes, Mr A. F. O. Sperring, editor of the “Tobacco World,” gave the number of cigarettes smoked in the year as 38,293,999,560. Although' this is vastly below the American figure, relative to population it is about the same.

“Every modern device,” ho declared “has been adopted to exploit the seemingly, natural tendency towards cigar-ette-smoking, and the result of all this, and the tremendous increase in cigarette-smoking engendered by the war, has been to bring cigarette production up to a figure which seems almost incredible.”

For the twelve months ending last December, the total tobacco consumption in this country was 147,831,767 lb, compared with 141,725,821 for 1928, and 138,159,900 for 1927. There has been a rapid increase since the war. In the year ending with March 1924, the official consumption was 128,8149171 b for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There has thus been an increase of nearly 20,000,0001 b in five years.

Cigarette-smoking by women is, of course, regarded as mainly responsible for the great increase since the war. The vogue of the cigarette goes back less than half a century. In 1870 one James Bonsack produced a machine, the first of its kind, which manufactured cigarettes at the rate of ISO per minute (the latest type turns out 1,200 per minute, the record output for one machine being about 530,000 in one day). First the cigarettes were plain, then printed, then gold tip, then cork tip, which has become so popular to-day. With Guida’s heroes the elegant smoking of a cigarette was a rare mark of luxury, and the tobacco they smoked was Turkish. It was the Boer War which really gave cigarette-smoking its fillip, just as it was the Great War which made the ctistom practically universal. The function of the modern machine is not only to manufacture at express rate, but to extract all sand and dust in the interests of health and hygiene.