Newspapers: Being Nonchalant About Smoking

In many Florida papers the story outranked and outspaced the riots in Panama. The Los Angeles Times gave it 44 running ft. of coverage in a single issue. John Connors, the Miami Herald’s two-pack-a-day science writer, handed himself a cruel and inhuman assignment: stop smoking. The Detroit Free Press set Reporter Barbara Stanton behind a hotel tobacco counter to see if local smokers were still buying. They were. The Houston Press offered $200 for the best letter on “Why I Quit Smoking” and $25 for the best letter on “Why I Won’t Quit.” In San Francisco, the Chronicle published a tongue-in-cheek survey reporting that seven out of ten smokers had given up reading the Surgeon General’s report.

The U.S. Public Health Service’s latest word on cigarette smoking was unquestionably the big conversational topic of the week. Banner headlines reflected the gravity of the conclusions: SMOKING CALLED GRAVE HAZARD (Fort Lauderdale News), CIGARETTES CAUSE CANCER (Chicago’s American), IT’S OFFICIAL CIGARETTE SMOKING CAN KILL YOU (New York Herald Tribune). News stories spelled out every detail, and the editorial cartoonists were both anxious and melodramatic (see cuts). But in some of the collateral stories spawned by the report, the papers seemed as willing as the U.S. smokers to face up to the new dangers with an air of nonchalance.

Absolutely Not. The Washington Star interviewed Mikhail A. Lavrentyev, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a Capitol visitor. Although Lavrentyev does not smoke, he graciously tried to boost—or perhaps undermine?—the morale of tobacco addicts with an apposite Russian proverb. The heavy smoker, said Lavrentyev, will never be burglarized and will never grow old, “because he stays up all night coughing—and won’t live long enough to enjoy old age.”

The Tampa Tribune found a local physician with emphysema, only one serviceable lung, and an unconquerable craving for cigarettes. Between drags, the doctor advised against doing as he did: “Anyone who smokes is a damn fool.” The Boston Traveler quoted a dental surgeon to the effect that smoking broils the palate, “just like a piece of meat on a grill.” In Detroit, the News front-paged the decision of a mother of 14 children—” ‘PACK-A-DAY’ MOM SAYS SHE’LL QUIT”—alongside a family portrait showing the mother blithely puffing away. The Chicago Daily News asked Social Arbiter Amy Vanderbilt if a gentleman should now offer a lady a safe cigar. Miss Vanderbilt’s decree: “Absolutely not.”

Playing with Fire. Back on the editorial pages, however, the smoking report got somewhat more sober consideration. Heavy smoking, said the New York World-Telegram, quoting a health tract published in London in 1637, “drieth the brain, dimmeth the sight, vitiateth the smell, hurteth the stomach, corrupteth the breath, annoyeth the milt, eliquateth the pinguie substance of the kidnies and absumeth the geniture.” Deep in tobacco country, the Raleigh, N.C., News and Observer noted that “the cigarette now is no more a ‘coffin tack’ because of scientific testimony than it was when the old folks so labeled it.” And while “the surest way to a long life is to eschew wine, women and cigarettes,” said the Observer, it might also help to avoid speeding, deep water and drafts, and to stop playing with fire.

“The most distressing possibility,” editorialized the Detroit Free Press, “is that what happens next will be nothing.” Chicago’s American called for action against “those ads which imply that cigarette smoking will give irresistible charm, good grooming, rippling muscles and the ability to water-ski.” In an editorial titled MUCH ADO ABOUT CIGGIES, the New York Daily News felt inclined to let either the tobacco industry or Government research solve the problem. The News quoted Dr. Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic (“You can’t legislate against sex or alcohol—or cigarette smoking”), and pronounced his words “the wisest comment we’ve heard to date.”

Scuttle the Ashtray. Most papers agreed that any official ban on smoking would work no better than Prohibition. “But what to do about it,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “is not nearly so clear.” The Washington News was hopeful: “Every smoker doesn’t automatically get cancer.” The Chicago Tribune let Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley have the last, if mystifying word: “All of you cigarette smokers ought to start searching your consciences to see what you can do for your family.”