Trouble In Tobaccoland

Millions of cigarette smokers are beginning to wonder whether or not they may be needing a treatment after the treat. A series of experiments with white mice has substantiated what a good many scientists have long suspected – there is a definite correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer of the lungs.

The worry over what this news may do to cigarette sales in 1954 would probably have tobacco tycoons chain smoking if they weren't concerned about their own health.

Actually the cigarette manufacturers brought the subject up in the first place. Though Old Gold tried to reverse the trend by talking about being "tobacco men, not medicine men,"and "curing just one thing, the world's best tobacco," the great majority of the cigarette companies kept pushing the idea that, unlike most other cigarettes, their brand screens out irritants, guards against smoke scratch, or has no adverse effect on the nose, throat and sinuses. Pall Mall popularized the king size cigarette, not by plugging the fact that you get more tobacco for your money, but suggesting that "puff for puff" the longer cigarette filters out more irritating smoke.

But it was Kent and their "Micronite" filter that really threw the industry a curve last year. Jonathan Blake kept showing up on television and in double-page magazine ads smoking five different brands through a special glass apparatus that left big, brown stains on a sheet of paper. Smokers were supposed to notice that Kent's stain wasn't quite as big or brown as those left by brands A, B, C, and D, but some smokers were apparently sufficiently impressed by the demonstration to forget about smoking entirely. 1953 marked the first drop in U. S. cigarette consumption in over twenty years.

"It's defensive advertising that's doing it," said market specialist Phil Hedrick of the North Carolina agriculture department at a recent North Carolina tobacco growers convention. "Instead of saying that cigarettes relax you, comfort you, and soothe the nerves, they deny that their brand will give you a disease. TV has made it much worse. They blow smoke in a test tube and all that sort of stuff. I don't think folks paid much attention to it over the radio, but it scares hell out of them on TV."

"It still seems a little odd," editorialized the Raleigh News & Observer, "that those who most emphasize the possible bad effects of cigarettes on people are the cigarette manufacturers themselves."

More than a little miffed by Kent's advertising, Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield) brought out a competing brand, named it L & M, and began promoting the idea that it not only did a better job of screening out the impurities in tobacco, but their specially patented filter was, itself, purer than the "mineral" filter used by an unnamed, but easily recognizable, competing brand. This offers a whole new approach to the cigarette companies' health campaigns, i.e., "If our competitor's tobacco doesn't get you, his filter may."

Viceroy, meanwhile, claimed the only way to get real protection was to combine a filter tip with the filtering action of a king size cigarette (Kent and L&M are both regular length). What's more, Viceroy had graphs showing nicotine and tars to prove it; they were almost as impressive and/or frightening as Kent's big, brown stains.

Then, just when the cigarette people were really beginning to get excited about the possibilities of this medical approach. a few scientists had to go and put in their unsolicited two cents worth. There is an ingredient in all cigarettes, regular, king size, filter tipped and the rest, they said, that can cause lung cancer. In laboratory tests, they had applied the tars from cigarette smoke to the skins of white mice and produced cancer. Other doctors, charting the disturbing rise in lung cancer over the last twenty years, saw a cause-and-effect relationship in the similar rise in cigarette consumption during the same period. After the age of forty-five, they estimate a heavy smoker's chances of contracting lung cancer are fifty times greater than a non-smoker's, and anyone who smokes a pack a day is rated a "heavy" smoker.

Scientists haven't been able to isolate and identify the trouble-making ingredient yet, but they do know that cigar and pipe smokers don't have the same high cancer correlation. This is probably due, not to a difference in ingredients, but the fact pipe and cigar smokers don't inhale deeply as most cigarette smokers do.

The tobacco industry's first reaction to the reports was no reaction at all, but the newspapers and national magazines gave the news too much attention to be ignored very long. In January the industry made a joint statement in full page newspaper advertisements throughout the country. This "Frank Statement To Cigarette Smokers" took, understandably enough, a rather dim view of the whole cigaretecancer idea; the reader was left with the suspicion that the only thing the tests proved was that white mice shouldn't smoke. The manufacturers questioned the conclusions drawn from the tests, the correlations cited, the validity of statistics (continued on page 43) Tobaccoland (continued from page 15) – in fact, everything about the research except the cigarettes themselves. After explaining away the findings, however, they pledged the formation of a joint industry research group of their own to look into the matter more thoroughly.

The scientists, themselves, are convinced that further tests will uncover the trouble-making mystery ingredient and that it can be removed. In the meantime, it's doubtful that very many women will switch to pipes or cigars, and habit will probably keep most male smokers using about the same amount of tobacco in the same form and brand as before. The fact that cigarettes can be harmful isn't exactly news – "coffin nails" have rated attention in life insurance statistics for a good many years. But let's face it, most of us do dozens of things every day that, in the strictest sense, might be considered "harmful." The guy who lives just for the moment is a fool – but only an old fuddy duddy gives up all the pleasures of today for the uncertain rewards of the future. A man interested in "the good life" settles on a pleasant compromise between these two extremes (excuse me while I flick the ash off my cigarette).

The aspect of this whole situation that is really humorous and probably the most galling to more than a few of the cigarette manufacturers is the thousands upon thousands of dollars that has been turned over to medical research organizations for 30 day mildness tests, and individual medicos for comments on the T-Zone, and answers to questions like "What cigarette do you smoke, doctor?"

After pouring all that loot into M.D. pockets, it could make a gentle old tobacco tycoon bitter to wake up one fine morning and discover the doctors of the nation calling his product poisonous. Et tu Dr. Brute!