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,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 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 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."