sample="quota" bates="ATX040209930" isource="ti" decade="1970" class="ui" date="19731112" Tobacco Institute Newsletter PREPARED FOR YOU BY THE INSTITUTE STAFF 1776 K STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20006 296-8434 Number 86 November 12, 1973 *** *** *** *** "THE PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE on Health Education" turned in its report, in an attractively printed brochure: It found U. S. citizens aren't getting enough information to help improve their health. One of the committee's 18 members, Richard McGrail, deputy exec. v.p. of the American Cancer Society, complained: "We may be somewhat prejudiced, but cigarette smoking is given very light treatment as a problem; we believe it should have been listed as one of the major health problems in this report." "Light treatment"? On page two, President Nixon is quoted: "...The whole society has a stake in the health of the individual...the non-smokers subsidize those who smoke. The letter of transmittal on page 11 says "studies show that youngsters who once urged their parents not to smoke have themselves become cigarette smokers." SMOKING is described as a "violation of medical advice" on page 18. A graph on page 19 shows "rates of first heart attack" according to amount smoked. Page 21 says obesity, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, drinking, sugar and cholesterol "take a large toll" from the middle-aged middle class. Presumably all this information was accumulated in extensive private interviews and public hearings. But no documentation is provided for any of it. *** *** *** *** NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL of Medicine ran several letters on the coffee-heart attack association question. Hickey and associates pointed out that "Degree of use of coffee, tea and tobacco is largely self-selected, not randomly selected, resulting in biased usage subgroups that present special problems in hypothesis testing. " In more colorful terms, a Calif. physician was reminded of the scientist who had fleas to jump when he played a record of " 'Stars and Stripes Forever.' He cut off the legs on the side, and lo and behold they jumped sideways. He cut off the other legs and lo and behold they did not jump at all. He concluded from this observation that cutting off both legs made them deaf. " GOOD COVERAGE resulted from an AMA news release about a new report in JAMA that "coffee drinking does not cause heart attacks," according to the release. "It most likely is the cigarette smoking and other risk factors that bring on the heart attack, it said. The reported study involved 464 heart patients examined before they became ill at the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center. It was said to contradict a coffee-heart attack link reported by Boston researchers earlier in Lancet. Meanwhile, the research team was scheduled to give a paper at the the American Hear Assn. meeting Nov. 8-11, on "Usage of tobacco, coffee, aspirin and alcohol as predictors of myocardial infarction." TWO AUTHORS of the coffee paper are Friedman and Siegelaub. With Seltzer, supported in part with a Council for Tobacco Research grant, they co-authored a paper in American Journal of Epidemiology on exposures to environmental hazards among some 70,000 Kaiser-Permanente subscribers. They found a pattern of higher exposure among smokers, concluded that "the apparent quantitative importance" of smoking in lung cancer "might be modified somewhat" if this were taken into account. ANOTHER QUANTITATIVE CHIP at the smoking-lung cancer hypothesis was taken by Chicago researchers Carrow and Meier in a review of the literature on "urban factor" in lung cancer in Archives of Environmental Health. Their point: Science cannot yet sort out lung cancer causes with any accuracy. As far as cigarette smoking is concerned, "much greater documentation is needed" and the most they could say is that "it appears to be" a cause. Their review was supported in part by the Environmental Protection Agency. ANOTHER GROUP, reporting in Archives findings of increasing respiratory abnormalities in men which corresponded, they said, with advancing age and among of smoking, echoed the Carrow sentiment about pollution data: "Not only is the measurement of all known pollutant beyond the reach of most communities now, but...day-to-day exposures of population groups can only be crudely estimated. " "STUDY OF CHRONIC USE OF MARIJUANA Demonstrates No Chromosome Breaks, Brain Damage, or Untoward Effects." So ran the bold headline on page one of Medical Tribune, an outspokenly anti-tobacco newspaper supported by pharmaceutical advertising and sent free to all physicians. The story: A previously unpublicized HEW project completed 18 months ago. Thirty chronic pot smokers (average seven cigarettes or two pipefuls per day) were put in a Jamaican hospital with 30 persons who did not use marijuana, then compared on the basis of extensive physical and psychological tests. A WAY WITH FIGURES: American Cancer Society tried to show the effectiveness of broadcast anti-cigarette announcements last week by citing an upturn in cigarette sales in 1971, when commercials were banned and there were fewer anti-cigarette spots. The ACS figures were coupled with an appeal to radio and TV "to return some of these wonderful, well-prepared public service announcements to the air." Trouble is, the Society used the wrong figures. According to USDA, total consumption of cigarettes has increased yearly since 1969, the height of the anti-cigarette broadcast activity. Per capita figures, such as those used by ACS to indicate a 5.6% decline between 1963 and 1973, are affected by an 18% increase in the adult population in that period and cannot be used to show any smoking trends, says USDA. At a news conference observing ACS's 60th anniversary, Terry declared, "there has not been one iota of scientific evidence to refute any information that came out of ((sic))" the 1964 SG report. He complimented "a New York City newspaper " (Ed. Note: There isn't one) "with guts enough to prohibit cigarette advertising" ; said NYC was a "sterling example" of using the tax penalty to reduce smoking and said he doesn't think repeal of NYC's differential tax is the answer to bootlegging ; said he doesn't know if the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the right to set "tar" and nicotine limits; declared there will be "significant impact on lung cancer death rates" in 5-10 years because of the large number of quitters. A handout at the conference said ACS estimates that per capita consumption of "tar" is down 32% in a decade and 53% less than 20 years ago. "We regard this -- the tar-reducing trend -- as clear evidence that the tobacco industry, despite its public disclaimers, accepts the evidence on the health hazards of smoking," said the release. Dr. Alan K. Pierce former president of the American Thoracic Society, told a Portland, Oregon Journal reporter that the marked increase in emphysema, chronic bronchitis and lung cancer is primarily due to cigarette smoking. As long as people persist in cigarette smoking, he said, these diseases will continue to increase at a marked rate. FRENCH NEWSPAPERS reported that the consultative assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation to its 17 member countries for stricter regulation of drink and tobacco advertising, and for prohibition of cigarettes with more than one mg of nicotine and 15 mg of "tar ." FROM BRITISH NEWSPAPERS: A Bournemouth Evening Echo editorial said the cigarette "now seems cast as the all-purpose villain" and that public warnings about smoking are "over-simplified." It concluded that "Exhortations are useless. More research might help." A letter in the Shields Gazette said that "publicizing facts favorable to the anti-smoking campaign and suppressing the antagonistic is little short of deceit." Meanwhile, reacting to the Nature editorial (Newsletter 83) which which criticized his assertion that smoking by mothers kills babies, statistician Goldstein wrote the journal to admit that, compared with earlier scientific publication, his popular article "was less cautious because it was more concerned with health education..." He went on, "When you say that the scientific evidence for a causal relationship may not yet be very conclusive, you are of course correct..." THIS BIT OF SATIRE, by London Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Simple, seems worthy of sharing in its entirety: Another Breakthrough? THE secretary of the improbably-named body the National Society of Non-smokers, in a letter to this newspaper, points to the fact that a lighted cigarette was the cause of the terrible fire at Douglas. He calls for an end to the scandal by which this implement of death is still available to children from cigarette machines. There are non-smokers far more extremist than he - Dr. Llewelyn Goth-Jones, the fluoride - crazed, pill - frenzied medical officer of health for Stratchford is one - who believes that smoking has been responsible for almost all human ills and disasters throughout history. Some militant non-smoking theologians of the Bevindon South Bank School believe that the apple Eve game to Adam in the "Biblical symbolic parable," at the instruction of Satan, and in spire of a clear Government health warning, was really a cigarette. U.S. News & World Report gave a half-page to information from a recently released Public Health Service publication called, "If You Must Smoke. " "PHS officials state," the news magazine said, "that the more you smoke, the greater your risk of a heart attack."U.S. News then went on to reiterate tips offered by PHS physicians: Choose a cigarette with less "tar" and nicotine; don't smoke a cigarette all the way down to the butt; take fewer draws; smoke less each day. NEW YORK TIMES headlined a long story, "Despite the Warnings, Millions Can't or Won't Give Up Smoking." Times interviewed smokers at random who reported cigarettes to be relaxing. Some said they thought they look better when they smoke; one said he looks more mature. Another was quoted saying, "I would rather smoke than eat." The Times noted the increase in consumption of cigarettes in this country despite constant attacks. NEW YORK CITY AUTHORITIES broke up an alleged cigarette "bootlegging" ring that has reportedly cost the state and the city "hundreds of millions of dollars in state and city taxes," said the New York Times. The Times said five organized-crime figures were indicated and that they cheated the city out of $3 million last year. A NEW LABOR AGREEMENT in New York will serve only as "just one more arrow in the heart of honest merchants," according to Morris Weintraub, managing director of the Wholesale Tobacco Distributors of New York. The agreement, which calls for a pay increase for delivery truck drivers, will result in a two cent per cigarette pack tax increase, said Weintraub, warning that the price rise would give the underworld greater incentive to increase their already huge illegal cigarette trade. A NEW BOOK BY UBELL, award-winning science writer and now NBC's director of tv news, New York, is called "How to Save Your Life" and has a 21-page chapter about smoking. It's largely a commercial for Horn's smoking-motivation test which, depending on one's score, is supposed to be helpful in quitting. It also repeats, as the author's own observations, the familiar smoker-nonsmoker mortality-morbidity statistics. As the foreword says, Horn read the chapter before publication. Excerpts: "When my wife and I have company, the one thing we dread is cleaning the ashtrays... " "My strategy is getting them ((former associates at the Herald-Tribune)) to stop was merely to assign them to any and all cigarette stories. The act of researching and writing the articles was enough to make all of them quit...That is the same force that was at work with the one hundred thousand doctors who quite..." DIED: Paul Dudley White, 87, widely publicized cardiologist and advocate of exercise and abstemious living, and member of the ASH board of directors. Nixon said he was "a model of all that is best in American medicine. " TI'S EARLE C. CLEMENTS was honored by his home town, Morganfield, in Kentucky's Union County, for his brilliant political career that included posts from county sheriff to Governor to U. S. Senator. Hundreds of people, including former governors and other state officials who worked with Clements, almost all the current Ky. delegation to Congress, family and friends flocked to Morganfield to help celebrate "Earle Clements Day." UNION COUNTY is stalwart Democratic territory. Not surprising, the Union County Advocate ran an editorial about Democrat Clements: "Through his ability to inspire, to motivate, to analyze and take appropriate action, he, as a builder, has been a public figure who 'made things happen.'" The very next editorial in the same paper was an urging for Republican Sen. Cook to seek--and voters of both parties to support--Cook's reelection next year. LITERATURE DISTRIBUTION is a prinicpal task of The Tobacco Institute, to help inform interested members of the public about the tobacco industry. Every 60 days a staff inventory and distribution recap is prepared. Here are some distribution totals of interest, for September and October: Among the 16 booklets in the individual state tobacco history and economic series--6,000 copies; the "Tobacco--Pioneer in American Industry" booklet--7,5000 copies; the poster on tobacco from farm to market--5200 copies; "The Cigarette Controversy" pamphlet on smoking-health--750; and the "Facts About Tobacco" leaflet--2,900. ###