Smoking - The Puff of Death!
Tomorrow's World Magazine
July 1969
Volume: Vol I, No. 2
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Smoking - The Puff of Death!

Why do some people smoke? What does smoking do to the human mind and body? What about filter-tips? When you add it all up — can you really AFFORD to smoke?

   IF PRESENT trends continue, ONE MILLION American school children can expect to die from lung cancer! Shocking?
   It has been authoritatively estimated that lung cancer accounts for only one fifth of the deaths caused by cigarette smoking. In fact, statistics indicate that smoking may be accountable for 300,000 DEATHS annually, in the United States.

Cigarettes — ON TRIAL

   In 1954 the Hammond-Horn Report was presented to the American Medical Association showing a causal relationship between smoking and disease. Ten years of research followed, confirming the report in every way.
   In 1964 the Surgeon-General's Report entitled Smoking and Health was issued, solidly confirming the Hammond-Horn report and proving the relationship between smoking and many diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.
   In 1967 the United States Public Health Service issued a report summarizing the data of 2,000 additional statistical studies. It CONFIRMED the conclusions of the earlier reports!
   The evidence is all in. It is CONCLUSIVE!
   The health hazard from smoking "is flat, scientific FACT" declared Dr. William H. Stewart, Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service in 1967. "Establishing it and demonstrating it is no longer our goal."
   Cigarettes have been on trial, and found GUILTY!
   In spite of warnings, declarations, statements, and scientific studies, however, 42 percent of the American population continues to SMOKE! About 50 million regular cigarette smokers puff away, oblivious to reality.
   However, there is some GOOD NEWS, too! The U. S. Public Health Service estimates there are about twenty-one million EX-smokers — nearly one out of four adult men!
   Dr. Ashbell C. Williams, president of the American Cancer Society, declared in 1967, "We must recognize that ours is a cigarette-ridden, cigarette-saturated culture." But he added, hopefully, that he believed half of all smokers "dislike the habit, would like to stop, but do not." One reason he cited for the "indifference" many smokers feel toward the danger is the $300-million-a-year tobacco industry advertising campaign.

"LIVE A LITTLE EXTRA" — Don't Smoke!

   From 1900 to 1967, consumption of tobacco products per person aged 15 years and over in the United States rose from 7.42 pounds to 10.50 pounds per capita. The rise in cigarettes, however, was from 49 to 4,003 per person per year!
   Meanwhile, lung cancer, almost UNKNOWN in 1900, claimed over 55,000 lives in 1968!
   In 1966 smoking directly led to41,012 deaths from lung cancer, 28,045 deaths from other cancers, 145,956 deaths from coronary disease, 42,821 deaths from other vascular diseases (strokes, etc.) and 43,726 deaths from all other diseases (emphysema, bronchitis, etc.) — a total of 301,560 deaths.
   Meanwhile, in comparison, in the United States in 1966 there were 11,210 murders, 20,160 suicides, 53,280 deaths from automobile wrecks, 35,380 deaths from diabetes, and 128,180 deaths from all infectious diseases — a total of 248,210 — over 50,000 deaths LESS than from tobacco!
   When you smoke, YOU TAKE YOUR LIFE INTO YOUR OWN HANDS! Smoking is a deadly game.
   Dr. Harold S. Diehl, Dean of Medical Sciences and Professor of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, in his new book Tobacco and Your Health: The Smoking Controversy, declared: "Another computation shows that the average heavy smoker — two or more packs a day — smokes during his lifetime about three quarters of a million cigarettes. As a result of this he loses 8.3 years — about 4.4 million minutes — of life. This amounts to a loss of almost 6 minutes per cigarette smoked: a minute of life for a minute of smoking" (p. 38).
   Think about it. Every minute you spend smoking, another minute of YOUR LIFE goes up "in smoke"!
   Other computations reveal that for every dollar spent on tobacco, another dollar plus must be spent for cigarette induced disease, or lost due to missing work because of smoking. In 1967 about $9 billion were spent on tobacco in the U. S. In that same year, an estimated $11 billion were lost to the American economy because of cigarette deaths, diseases, and lost workdays! Therefore, when you total it all up, smoking amounts to a TWENTY-BILLION-DOLLAR SWINDLE YEARLY perpetrated upon the naïve, gullible American public!
   Is it worth it?
   In 1945 chronic bronchitis and emphysema caused 2,938 deaths. In 1965, twenty years later, deaths rose to 22,686 - over TEN TIMES as many! The rise has been more rapid than any other disease. Says Dr. Diehl, "At this rate of increase, 100,000 persons in the United States will die from these diseases in 1975" (Tobacco and Your Health, pp. 88-89).
   Over a million people in the United States are forced to lead restricted lives because of emphysema. It incapacitates 1 out of 14 wage earners over 45. A study of British physicians showed the death rate for bronchitis and emphysema for those who smoked 1-14 cigarettes a day was 6.8 times as high as that for nonsmokers; those who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day suffered TWENTY ONE TIMES as many deaths from these causes than nonsmokers!
   In just five more years, predicts Dr. Edward A. Gaensler, Professor of Surgery at Boston University School of Medicine, emphysema will be responsible for the disability of TWENTY MILLION workers (ibid., p. 93).
   All in all, today there are 11 million more cases of chronic illness yearly in the United States due to smoking; 280,000 more people have heart trouble yearly, because of smoking; 1.8 million more cases of sinusitis yearly are due to smoking; and 1 million more cases of peptic ulcers each year than there would be if all people had the same disease rate as those who never smoked.
   But isn't it strange — sort of gruesomely macabre in a way? If a doctor developed a vaccine that would prevent lung cancer, and protect you from emphysema, bronchitis, and heart disease — saving 300,000 lives a year — you know that there would be a maddening STAMPEDE by millions to be inoculated with it.
   But even better than such a vaccine would be a simple step — just stop smoking!
   How many will take it?

"It Couldn't Happen to Me"

   Those are famous last words. The idea that a person couldn't have lung cancer or some other horrible cigarette-induced disease strike HIM, personally, seems to be a common attitude. Many reject the idea their own health could be affected, or endangered. Smokers seemingly don't visualize themselves suffering from cancer of the lung or gasping out their agony-wracked breath with emphysema. It always happens to the other guy!
   However, current statistics mean that 38 of every 100,000 men will die this year because of lung cancer! Or, a total of about 240 of every 100,000 men will die from some cigarette-caused disease!
   Any way you slice it, any way you look at it, smoking is COSTLY — one of the most costly habits you could have! In England men spend from $6,000 to $12,000 in a lifetime on the smoking habit. A person smoking two packs of cigarettes a day spends upwards of $200 a year on his habit — or $2,000 in ten years, $4,000 in twenty years, etc.
   THINK about it!
   Can you really AFFORD to smoke, when you add up all the costs, expenses for cigarettes, medical bills, decreased efficiency, increased nervousness, chronic illness, and ultimately perhaps terminal cancer?

The Lung Cancer Peril

   Projections by the National Cancer Institute show that smoking alone could more than DOUBLE the number of lung cancer deaths by the end of the century. By the year 2000, smoking could cause as many as 125,000 deaths a year from lung cancer!
   Currently, each year more than 50,000 Americans die of lung cancer, 95 percent of them within five years. An estimated 75 percent of all cases of lung cancer are directly attributable to smoking.
   The Cancer Society estimates that lung cancer will kill approximately 59,000 in 1969, an increase of 4,000 over 1968. Lung cancer, said Dr. William H. Stewart, "is the most common cause of death from cancer, and it is increasing at EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS" (UPI, June 14, 1966).
   In 1966 the nation's top advisory panel on cancer, the National Advisory Cancer Council, said an "enormous MAN-MADE EPIDEMIC" of lung cancer has hit the United States as a result of cigarette smoking (New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 13, 1966).
   Only a few stubborn die-hards continue to deny the proven relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Most of them have personal "axes to grind." They simply cannot see the truth because they are blinded to it; or they will not believe it because they don't want to admit it.
   The Surgeon-General's Report declared in unequivocal terms: "Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking far outweighs all other factors."
   Dr. Clarence Lieb wrote, "Experts have established that, on a lifetime basis, one out of every ten men who smoke two packs of cigarettes a day will die of lung cancer. Among nonsmokers, only one man out of 275 runs that risk" (Don't Let Smoking Kill You, p. 65).
   "On the basis of tar tests... Dr. Alton Ochsner, who had previously noted that all of the men who came to him for serious lung surgery were heavy smokers over the age of 40, predicted that by 1970 the lung would account for as much as 50 percent of all cancer in men. One out of every two men with cancer would have cancer of the lung — equal to one out of every ten men living!
   "Lung cancer is rapidly approaching these catastrophic figures. It is moving faster than any other form of cancer, is growing faster than any other disease as a cause of death. In the U. S., the lung cancer death rate in the past quarter of a century has quadrupled for men, doubled for women" (ibid., page 71).
   In the early 1900s, lung cancer. was a rare disease. By 1954 the death rate had increased 20-fold among men!

The Smoking Scourge

   When you carefully investigate the whole subject, and study the facts and statistics available, you can come to but one conclusion: Smoking is deadly — it is a menace to health!
   Cigarette smoking not only causes lung cancer, but has been implicated in chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease, cardiovascular ailments. Tobacco can damage the nervous system, causing progressive blindness (a condition called tobacco amblyopia), and seems to be partially responsible for a loss of sexual vigor. Among women, frigidity can be due to smoking. Several studies and reports have indicated a greater incidence of frigidity, sterility, menstrual disturbance and miscarriage among smoking women.
   A study of smokers and nonsmokers at Yale University revealed that the development of the chest was 77 percent better with nonsmokers than with smokers.
   In physical fitness training for instructors of the British Army, it was found that in the 3-mile race an average of 3 times as many nonsmokers were among the first ten to finish the race, and 3 times as many smokers among the last ten.
   Smoking is incompatible with physical endurance, muscular power and aptitude to face certain emergencies requiring physical effort.
   But, little known to many people is the effect of smoking on the mind. Although 75 percent of the students at Harvard smoke, no smoker has ever stood at the head of his class for the last 50 years. At Antioch College, 75 percent of the smokers fail, but only 30 percent of the nonsmokers.
   Two thousand experiments were held testing the effect of smoking on mental responses. It was found that in all cases smoking lowered MENTAL EFFICIENCY from 10 to 23 percent!

Pipes, Cigars and Chewing

   Learning of the serious menace to health from smoking, many change or switch to cigars, pipes, or some other habit. Is this the answer to the problem?
   No. The facts are that pipe smoking, cigar smoking and even tobacco chewing are as much — if not more —to blame for buccal cavity cancer as is cigarette smoking. Even before the turn of the century, doctors were convinced that lip and mouth cancers were likelier to be seen in pipe and cigar smokers.
   Dr. Alton Ochsner said, "Smoking can also cause cancer of the lip, mouth and tongue. In these cases, it is the smoking of pipes and cigars which is especially to blame."
   Dr. Clarence W. Lieb declared, "Pipe smoke, because of a greater fire area, is hotter and more irritating to the mouth and pharynx than smoke from a cigarette or a medium-sized cigar; it also contains more nicotine and other irritants." He also said, "Pipe smokers get cancer of the lips, where they usually hold the pipe; and tobacco-chewers, when they get cancer, get it where they usually keep the chew."

One Chance in TEN

   The American Cancer Society says, "If you are a nonsmoker — your chances of getting lung cancer are only four in a thousand." But, says Dr. Harold Shyrock, "Continuing to smoke is like playing Russian roulette. The confirmed heavy smoker's chances of dying from lung cancer are ONE IN TEN."
   Is it worth it?
   Every day in the United States there are 375 deaths from heart and circulatory diseases, 175 deaths from lung cancer, and 250 deaths from other cigarette-related diseases! More than 800 die daily because of cigarette smoking.
   None of these diseases is pleasant. Cancer can be excruciatingly painful, horrible. Chronic bronchitis can be sheer torture. Buerger's disease (where the small arteries of the fingers and toes are obstructed) occurs almost exclusively in men who smoke. In its final stages, it can end in gangrene and force amputation of the affected part.
   Count the cost. Add it all up. It's not worth it!
   Therefore, if you don't smoke — DON'T START!!!
   If you do smoke — QUIT NOW, before it is too late!

WHY Do People Smoke?

   About 70 million people in the United States smoke, in one form or another. An estimated two million teenagers join the ranks of the smokers every year.
   There are an estimated five million who smoke two packs a day — about four percent of the adult population.
   When do people start smoking?
   Actual data suggests that few children begin smoking before age 12 — less than five percent of the boys and one percent of the girls, probably. From age 12, however, smoking gradually increases.
   At the 12th-grade level, between 40 and 55 percent of children have been found to be smokers. By age 25, estimates run as high as 60 percent of men and 36 percent of women (Smoking and Health, page 362).
   Dr. Horn estimates that 10 percent of later smokers begin to become regular smokers before their teens, and 65 percent during their high school years.
   Is it any wonder, then, that many cigarette commercials seem to feature youth, vitality, excitement, fun, and those things which are attractive to young people in particular?
   A survey of 16,486 grade-school youngsters showed that more than one in five smoked cigarettes — and that many start smoking at the tender age of eight!
   The survey, conducted by the Medical Society of Atlantic County, found that 24 percent of the boys and 21 percent of the girls were smokers, in grade school. Among third graders, boys smoking outnumbered girls five to one.
   Similarly, the chairman of the California inter-agency council on cigarette smoking and health revealed that TEN PERCENT of all fifth and sixth grade students in California smoke cigarettes (UPI, Jan. 13, 1968). Dr. Paul R. Baker said, "Children tend to idolize their parents and imitate them." He placed most of the blame on parents who allow their children to smoke.
   A survey in Fort Wayne, Indiana, showed that almost one of every ten pupils in the sixth through ninth grades smoked. The survey covered 12,000 students (UPI, Mar. 29, 1966).
   Nationwide, every day of the year 4,500 youngsters 12-17 years of age take up smoking, an official of the Health, Education, and Welfare Department disclosed.
   Statistics indicate that one boy in five in the United States begins smoking by the ninth grade, and by the senior year of high school 44 percent of the boys smoke. Overall, ONE THIRD of the young people in high school are regular cigarette smokers!
   Why?
   Dr. Daniel Horn answers, "Children's smoking is largely dependent on parental example." In statistical terms, a youth is TWICE as likely to begin smoking in high school if both his parents smoke than he is if neither of them smokes.
   Indicative of the reasons children begin smoking is a survey of 1,307 school children in Hertfordshire, England, a few years ago.
   The survey revealed children began smoking:
   To feel big — 244.
   To copy adults — 221.
   To show off — 215.
   To appear grown up — 198.
   Because friends do — 124.
   To copy parents — 104.
   If you put copying adults and parents together, you find that 325 smoked because of the example of older people!
   If you don't want your children to smoke, WHAT KIND OF EXAMPLE are you setting for them?
   Take another look at these reasons given by children for smoking. If you add "to appear grown up" to the two we just mentioned, a total of 523 began smoking because of the fact that ADULTS SMOKED! Children are the world's greatest IMITATORS! "Like father, like son" is very true.
   Young boys and girls want to be "grown up." They want to be like Mom and Dad. They want to feel "big" and "important." Those are the underlying, BASIC REASONS children begin smoking!
   It all boils down to vanity — a desire to exalt and enlarge the Self — to make oneself more important. This is VANITY!
   YOU probably began smoking for much the same reason! Think back. That is, if you are a smoker. You probably started smoking because your parents did, or it seemed the grown-up thing to do, it was socially accepted, and — also — YOUR friends and associates did it.
   Isn't that right?
   VANITY OF VANITIES!
   Too many people are victims of society. They do whatever OTHER PEOPLE do. They follow the herd like dumb sheep. They don't think for themselves. They don't analyze the consequences or count the COST. And when it comes to smoking, the cost can be enormous — your life itself!
   What about it?
   If you are a smoker, the real reason you began smoking and have continued, is NOT because you really enjoy cigarettes — is it?
   No, be honest with yourself. Sure, you might think smoking helps you relax, relieves anxiety and tension. But does it? Medical evidence shows that on the contrary, smoking actually is a vicious cycle — it ADDS TO ANXIETY, increases TENSION!
   The claim that smoking calms nerves is one of the biggest deceptions ever practiced!
   Dr. Clarence Lieb said, "Nervous smokers smoke to relieve their tension. This relief is only temporary. Smoking in turn increases tension. And... so goes this vicious circle."
   Dr. Harold Dingeman said, "Smokers suffer 76% more from nervousness than nonsmokers."
   Said Dr. Robert Jackson, "If one has a NEED for a cigarette... that's because he became the SLAVE of a toxic product — and this need clearly proves that the poisons have started their deadly work. The more a man will continue to whip his nerves with such help, the more his nerves will become abnormal."
   All the tobacco does IS APPEASE THE CRAVING of the cigarette addict!
   Let's not kid ourselves. The reason people smoke, when you get down to it, is two-fold. First, they began in most cases because of the INFLUENCE of other people who smoked, notably their parents!
   And once a person is "hooked" on smoking, he continues — not because of the relaxation and relief it affords, but — because he is psychologically, emotionally, mentally HOOKED on the drug! He craves the effect of the nicotine and the tars. He has become a whimpering, cringing, crawling, abject SLAVE of the cigarette god!
   The cigarette is his master. He is its worshipful, adoring, trembling SLAVE!

Truth about Filters

   But wait, you say — what about filter-tip cigarettes?
   Won't filter-tips protect your health — safeguard you from the danger of cancer?
   Filter-tipped cigarettes, dominating the market today, have a big sales appeal to smokers because they claim — either overtly or covertly — to cut down the amount of tar and nicotine and thereby are "safer" than regular cigarettes.
   The facts, however, show that filters do an inefficient job and in a great number of instances filter-tip cigarettes give a HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF TARS and nicotine than do regular cigarettes! (Don't Let Smoking Kill You, page 93)
   A four-year survey conducted at Stockholm, Sweden, revealed that filter-tipped cigarettes are NOT always less dangerous than those without tips. The survey, published in the Swedish Medical Journal, analyzed the tar and nicotine yield of 35 leading American, French, British and Scandinavian brands. It disclosed that several filter-tipped cigarettes had a HIGHER YIELD than ordinary cigarettes and that even tipped and non-tipped cigarettes of the same brand sometimes gave equal yields of tar and nicotine! (Reuters, December 11, 1968)
   At a Congressional hearing on cigarette advertising claims, it was revealed that one manufacturer's regular-sized cigarette yields less tar and nicotine than the same manufacturer's filter-tip product, or its king-sized brand! Another company put out a filter-tip that yielded less tar but more nicotine!
   In one case, manufacturers developed a filter-tip that was extremely effective too effective for smokers! All it let through was a lot of hot air. Needless to say, the brand was not very popular until the manufacturer modified the filter, letting through more nicotine and tar!
   That, in a nutshell, is the trouble with filters. If the filter is good enough to remove the tars and nicotine, there is no pleasure in smoking — so why smoke? If the filter does let through enough of the tars and nicotine to affect the human body, then there is the danger of disease, CANCER, and a horrible DEATH!
   Studies reveal that very little of the tars or nicotine is removed from cigarettes by filters. The overall difference from one brand to another is negligible.
   For many reasons, therefore, no filter-tip cigarette can be considered to have eliminated whatever health hazard is present in smoking! In fact, some of the filter-tips are more harmful than regular cigarettes because of the lower-grade tobaccos they use!
   Dr. C. W. Lieb declared that the fact that the filters masquerade as an aid to health, while they are no such thing, is to his mind, "the shame of the filters."
   The Surgeon-General's Report states emphatically, "NO METHOD of treating tobacco or filtering the smoke has been demonstrated to be effective in materially reducing or eliminating the hazard of lung cancer.
   "Present knowledge indicates that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to filter selectively, specific components such as carcinogens."
   For this reason, the report concludes, "... the individual person's risk of lung cancer can best be reduced by the elimination of SMOKING"!
   The answer is not changing to filters, or to a pipe — the solution to the cigarette peril is to STOP SMOKING!

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Tomorrow's World MagazineJuly 1969Vol I, No. 2