Tobacco smoking: the end of the road?
Tobacco has been known to us for quite a long time, cigarettes not nearly so long, but long enough for the smoking habit to be very well established by the time the Royal College of Physicians issued their report on lung cancer earlier this year. Although it is probably true to say that medicos have never been really happy about the effect of smoking on health, it is only in recent years that they have felt able to pin some of the blame on it at least for stomach irritation, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, coronary thrombosis, and last but not least—lung cancer.
The Royal College’s report Smoking and Health, published last March launches a swinging attack on the smoking habit—cigarettes mainly—but it is not the first of its kind. In 1950, Professor Hill and Dr. Doll published results of their first investigation into the incidence of lung cancer in relation to men’s smoking habits. Then at the beginning of 1952 the American Cancer Society began a survey of nearly two hundred thousand men between the ages of fifty and seventy. Its grim findings were announced to the American Medical Association convention in 1954.
Tobacco shares fell at the news, but Alistair Cook, writing in The Manchester Guardian at the time, was a little hasty when he assumed that it would “. . . induce profound melancholia or even penury in the American cigarette manufacturers.” Sales of tobacco have continued to rise since then, with cigarettes reaching an all time high in 1961. In that year also, there were 22,000 deaths from lung cancer in Great Britain alone.
In the twelve years since the Hill and Doll report there have been similar independent surveys conducted in at least eight countries. All have reached the same broad conclusions, so that the R.C.P. report this year only set the seal really on the impressive weight of evidence which has been building up in the meantime. It is difficult to say at this stage how seriously this latest report will be taken; there is still a very strong social habit to be taken into account. But that is not the whole story. It is really only the fag end.
The tobacco firms are rich and very well established. Some idea can be gained of the persistent money spinner that tobacco is, when it is realised that in this country alone last year £825 million went to the Government in revenue from this source. Almost exactly the cost of the National Health Service, as one noble Lord put it. Which gives us a glimpse of the dilemma facing our rulers—powerful tobacco interests and a huge tax income on the one hand and a rising lung cancer rate on the other.
Maybe they can take some solace from the fact that others before them have had to tread a similar path. Over the centuries since its discovery and the beginning of its use in England, tobacco has been violently attacked and just as stoutly defended, but its consumption has increased and with it the tax yield. Even James I, who campaigned vigorously against the weed in such works as A Counterblast to Tobacco (1604) was not slow to slap on an import duty of 6s. 8d. a pound the following year. Some say that James’ antagonism toward tobacco was really an expression of his hatred of Sir Walter Raleigh. Be that as it may, and whatever his original motives for imposing the tax, he was cute enough to realise its possibilities. By 1613, he had rescinded his earlier tax and in 1624 made tobacco a Royal Monopoly.
Nicotiana Tabacum — common tobacco — native of Central and South America, is now grown the world over and accounts for about three-quarters of all that is smoked. It was introduced into Europe about 1530. There is still some dispute over which of the colonists in the time of Hawkins and Drake brought the plant to England. What we can say is that smoking slowly took hold here between 1565 and 1590. Ironic that today it should come under such heavy medical fire, when in those days it was thought to have great curative powers and in many places took root because of this belief.
The first cigarettes known to be manufactured in England were by Robert Gloag in 1856. He opened a factory in Walworth, London. This form of smoking gained rapid popularity (probably because of its comparative cheapness) and the various cigarette firms, familiar to us all, were well established by the turn of the century. Seventeen of them combined in 1902 to form The Imperial Tobacco Company Ltd., as a counter to the threat of American competition. They were strong enough to win the “tobacco war” with the American manufacturer James Buchanan Duke, and secured his withdrawal from the English market.
As the market for tobacco, and particularly cigarettes, expanded, so did the government’s interest in it as a course of taxation. This applied even more in times of war. During the first world war, for example, the duty was raised enormously and eventually reached 8s. 2d. a lb., where it remained until 1927 when there was another jump to 8s. 1Od. Again, the second world war gave a tremendous fillip to taxation and at the end of it, the duty had reached 35s. 6d. per Ib. Successive governments have continued the practice since then.
Which is just about where we came in. All governments have to levy taxes to finance their administration of capitalism’s economy, and they are not particularly worried about where they get them from. Tobacco has been a sure source of income up to now and cigarettes take the brunt of this because they form at least 4/5ths of the tobacco consumed in Britain today. So although strong medical suspicions have been voiced for over ten years, cigarette consumption has continued to rise and the government has continued to cream off some of the profits.
It must be a bit perplexing for our politicians to have to set about discouraging a widespread habit which they have themselves helped to foster in the past. Remember the huge quantities of “fags” distributed free to the forces during the last war, and how they were considered vital in boosting morale? But 22,000 deaths in one year and the rate still rising cannot be ignored. Let the tobacco companies gripe if they like. The more astute capitalist politician will have his eye on the threat to production if the incidence continues to rise. And remember that it is not uncommon in the younger age groups now, the ones who matter so much in the productive scheme of things. That is why the anti-smoking propaganda has been directed so conspicuously at school children, and not old age pensioners.
Just how successful the government’s campaign will be is anybody’s guess. The smoking habit is certainly well established, but if it threatens the overall interests of the capitalist class they will try to do something about it. What will happen to the tobacco firms then? Some may go broke, but there will be other fields of profitable investment. Labour will be transferred elsewhere, and the government will start looking in other directions for its taxes.
But by then we shall probably have other problems to worry us anyway. Poor health, after all, is not something for which smoking is solely to blame. Inferior diet, poor working conditions and the sheer strain of modern living are constantly wearing workers down. Add only three of the factors which are to that the fact that medical research itself is never very high on the priority list of expenditure, and you have an idea of the magnitude of this problem. To say that it is social is to stress the obvious, and despite the best intentions of the medical profession the task of tackling it can hardly begin until capitalism is well on the way out
E.T.C.