Cigarettes and health (From Croydon Guardian)

Cigarettes and health

7:22pm Wednesday 18th June 2008 in

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Yet again I am surprised that a news item which I thought would reverberate in the media died a sudden death.

This time it was the emergence of the fact that a British Prime Minister, an officer and a gentleman, I thought, and an old Etonian, I believe, supressed the news that a definite link had been established between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

He apparently did this because he was more concerned about the tax revenue he could lose, if the news led to a fall in cigarette sales, than he was with the fact that some of his fellow men and women, those who might have given up smoking if they knew of the risk to their health, would die unpleasant and early deaths.

He would have known that families would often lose their only bread winner, as few married women worked in those days, and children would lose their fathers. It is hard if not impossible to think of a more despicable decision any man in such an elevated position in a nation's establishment could possibly make.

I saw no estimate of the number of unnecessary deaths which could have occurred as a result of that decision.

I would guess that it was many, many, times the number of deaths which have resulted, so far, from the decisions of later Prime Ministers to engage the country in military adventures.

I thought that those Prime Ministers would have difficulty in sleeping at night but the deaths resulting from their decisions are as nothing compared to the decision to supress the news of the establishment of the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Perhaps the news died it’s sudden death because most of those now working in the media are younger and were not themselves denied the information on the health risks of cigarette smoking and were therefore free to make their own decision.

My age group were those who were at the age when the sometimes fatal, often disabling, decision to become, or not to become, a smoker, was usually made. We were denied the facts at least for some time. Many of them may have suffered unnecessarily and many unnecessarily died early deaths. Perhaps that is why I feel so strongly on this issue.

Those older than I am who may have given up smoking if they had known the risks were also denied the facts for some time at least. Few of the smokers in that cohort will still be alive and those that are will be amongst the few who have the genes to protect them from tobacco smoke.

Most of the other few older survivors will be non-smokers. They will have been the few strong enough, or poor enough, to be able to resisted the exceedingly strong social pressures that existed, throughout all levels of society at that time, to be a smoker.

Offering around your packet of cigarettes, and accepting other’s offers, were daily social rituals and those who did not participate were made to feel uncomfortable outsiders.