More Smoke

New Surgeon General's report

The 1964 Surgeon General's report, Smoking and Health, was a 387-page bombshell that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer, heart disease and other ailments. It also prompted many smokers to quit, led to the posting of health warnings on cigarette packs, and inspired Congress to ban cigarette ads from the air waves. Last week, on the 15th anniversary of the document's release, Surgeon General Julius B. Richmond issued a new report on smoking. As Richmond's, boss. Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr., writes in a foreword, the second study provides "overwhelming" proof "that cigarette smoking is even more dangerous--indeed, far more dangerous--than was supposed in 1964."

Unlike its predecessor, the new report contains no previously unpublished data. Instead, its 1,200 pages summarize some 30,000 research papers issued over the past 15 years. Among the major findings:

> Lung cancer deaths among women have increased fivefold (4,100 in 1955 vs. 20,455 in 1976), indicating, says the report, that "women who smoke like men die like men who smoke."

> Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children with physical or mental defects than are nonsmokers.

> The percentage of girls age twelve to 14 who smoke has increased eightfold (from .6% to 4.9%) since 1968.

> For smokers who work in the asbestos, rubber, coal, textile, uranium and chemical industries, the risk of developing lung cancer is 90 times as great as the risk for nonsmokers in other fields.

> Smoking increases the risk of peptic ulcers and cancer of the larynx, mouth, bladder and pancreas.

> For reasons unknown, blacks smoke more than whites and blue-collar workers more than white-collar workers.

Even before the report was released, the industry-funded Tobacco Institute denounced it as "more rehash than research" and asserted that the links between smoking and disease have not been proved conclusively. Institute Vice President Bill Dwyer accused Califano, who kicked his three-pack-a-day habit in 1975, of displaying "all the zeal of a reformed sinner." Added Dwyer: "America beware if Joe Califano ever gives up drinking or other pleasure pursuits, even the most intimate."

At a Washington press conference, Califano noted that consumption of cigarettes dropped by three-tenths of 1% last year, which translates into 2 billion cigarettes. Though the percentage of Americans who smoke has been declining, 53.2 million still have the cigarette habit --about the same as in 1964.

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