SMOKING HAZARD SECONDARY TO PROFITS

BRITAIN'S tobacco barons have si maintained a discreet silence ovel latest medical report on smoking.

They have declined to comment on the wealth of evidence brought together in the Royal College of Physicians' 'Smoking and Health Now', which places the responsibility for 34,500 deaths a year in Britain on smoking.

While silence prevails on the manufacturing front, Tory Health Minister Sir Keith Joseph is quoted as regarding the RCP report as 'authoritative confirmation on the health risks of smoking ... These are risks which no one can attord to ignore'.

Meanwhile Sir Keith and the tobacco giants are in the midst of discussions on the best way of keeping the public informed on these risks.

Warnings

What is clear is that, while the tobacco companies can no longer brush aside the mountain of evidence on smoking hazards, they will now concentrate on castrating any ALL TRADES MEETINGS are and Hounds.

Nursery "Batchelor's and future of the AEF in Sheffield.

Miners and the Charter of Basic 12 noon.

Hinchcliffe (Glasshoughton Colliery). Frank aerosWorn Seller Horse 12 noon. Ship Inn.

Barker (Ollerton Colliery).

Come to Alexandra Palace!

Force the Tories to resign! LUTON: Tuesday p.m. AEU House, 396 Dunstabl DAGENHAM: Thursday, Januar New Rap.™. Marsh i Green School ham High Rd.

ACoN Mends Hall Pe 20, Oddfellows Fletcher Rd, W3.

EAST LONDON: Wedestial Inn: uary 20, 8 p.m.

Chrisp St Market, E.14.

SLOUGH: Monday, February .1, 8 p.m. St George's Church Hall. Long Furlongs Drive, Britwell Eastate.

newspape ished by iers ham Higl eet, ¡ Press LI ih Street, measures proposed in the wake of the report.

Printed warnings on cigarette packets will do little to reduce smoking, as has been proved in the United States, and the Tory government is unlikely to go much further.

The government's friends in the tobacco industry can be assured that most of the RCP's proposals for a concerted attack on 'the habit' will remain proposals, as they have over the last 20 years since the cancer-smoking link was discovered.

Since 1950, when the first evidence was published in the British Medical Journal, confirmation of the link between tobacco deaths cancer, bronchitis and heart disease has mounted-as have the efforts of the international tobacco industry to dismiss, ridicule belittle such evidence.

At stake are the massive profits of manufacturers in the metropolitan countries and the stability of such regimes of repression as Ian Smith's in S Rhodesia.

With all this in danger, what matters the health of millions of workers throughout the world?

Sales

The three leading firms in Britain made £206m profit last year and pumped out £52m in advertising their wares.

Nearly 70,000 are employed on the manufacture of cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products and total 1969 cigarette sales were 124,900 million. ( No doubt there are many conscious-stricken bourgeois who are now contributing to the Glasgow fund for the families of the 66 Ibrox dead.

At the same time they will applaud, des port of the desire order things, booming coffers of the tobacco kings.

Yet if the Ibrox disaster were to take place every day of the year, the annual death toll would still fall far short of the total prematurely slaughtered by smoking.

Young workers, in particuevidence. must heed the medical The health of the working class is of no concern to the employers and their government, except in SO far as profit can be made from it..

No capitalist government will implement an effective campaign to stamp out the smoking danger. To do SO would mean the expropriation of the tobacco chiefs.

The RCP report certainly makes out a convincing case for such action.