Report sent cigarette myths up in smoke
JUNE 27, 1957
SIXTY years ago this week, a report by the British Medical Research Council confirmed a link between smoking and lung cancer.
It ended years of mixed messages and myths regarding the habit.
The Government said they would launch an educational campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking, while the tobacco companies didn’t surprise anyone by insisting this was just a “matter of opinion” rather than hard fact.
A dramatic increase in deaths from lung cancer over the previous 25 years had been the subject of the BMRC’s study.
Its conclusion, that the main cause was smoking, was a sensation – in 1945 the mortality rate from lung cancer was 188 deaths in every million, and that had risen to 388 in just a decade.
Evidence was gleaned from 21 investigations across six countries, finding smoking was the main cause of lung cancer in all of them.
John Vaughan-Morgan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, insisted: “The Government feels it is right to ensure that this latest authoritative opinion is brought effectively to public notice, so that everyone may know the risks involved.”
For those who had often viewed cigarettes, pipes and cigars as cool and trendy, sexy even, they suddenly had food for thought.
Glamorous Hollywood stars, singers, even royals and politicians, were happy to be seen holding a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe, smoke belching everywhere.
The strangest thing, in many ways, is how so many of us still smoke today, six decades later.
It probably has a fair bit to do with ordinary people copying their heroes, in music, cinema and elsewhere.
The Beatles were often pictured with fags, and everyone from Winston Churchill to Humphrey Bogart, David Bowie to Princess Margaret, made smoking look cool and sophisticated.
Mr Vaughan-Morgan, however, also made it clear that smoking would not be banned and that the general public would be allowed to make up their own minds.
Prohibiting it in cinemas and other public places, unlike now, was briefly considered before the idea was dropped.
Many hundreds of millions of pounds were, and still are, generated by the sale of cigarettes.
Taxes on tobacco were huge, and many questioned where all that money would come from if everyone kicked the weed overnight.
Not that it was likely to happen, and the consensus was that the older generation might as well keep smoking, but hope kids didn’t copy.
Sadly, many did – and still do.
Cigs, pipes and cigars were seen as cool and sexy