CIGARETTES (HEALTH HAZARDS) (Hansard, 21 January 1970)

§ Sir Gerald Nabarro (Worcestershire, South)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the labelling of cigarette packets to inform the public of possible health hazards resulting from cigarette smoking. The authorship of this Measure properly belongs to the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Dr. John Dunwoody), now Joint Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security, who introduced a similar Bill during the last Session, but too late to make progress. I was on that occasion the first Tory sponsor on his Bill. It fell at the end of the last Session, and I now seek to reintroduce the Bill, supported by five Socialist Members, five Tory Members, and one Liberal Member, a maximum of 12 sponsors.

I am seeking to introduce the Bill because of the dire effects of cigarette smoking upon the population of this country, not only the adult population, but notably adolescents and young people, and the increasing habit evident among young people of smoking cigarettes from the age of 13 upwards. Those who listened to the "Today" programme on the B.B.C. this morning will have heard a schoolgirl of 13, and boys of 14, 15 and 16 confessing that they were smoking up to 50 cigarettes a day, all of which is a developing habit of the worst order, likely to lead, not only to a grave shortening of their lives, but to serious health and social consequences.

The deaths through dread diseases directly attributed to cigarette smoking are rising year by year. The latest available figures, for 1968 as published by the Department of Health and Social Security, show that lung cancer accounted for 25,952 deaths, chronic bronchitis for 22,398 deaths and coronary heart disease for 34,654 deaths, a total of 83,004 deaths in England and Wales alone.

Properly adjusted to include Scotland and those cases which are widespread, I am reminded by the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), where the doctor did not attribute the death directly to lung cancer but mentioned some other cause, it is 520 probable that the total United Kingdom death rate on account of cigarette smoking is about 100,000 per annum.

I am delighted to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his place. This year he collects from tobacco duty the fabulous figure of £1,125 million, and I was informed this morning by Customs and Excise—the figure is, therefore, irrefutable —that the cigarette element is 87 per cent., or about £980 million. Of course, it is measured on the tobacco and, therefore, it is not easy to separate cigarettes from other tobacco products.

But the fact remains that Government money spent on warnings against cigarette smoking amounts to only £110,000 compared with the total revenue that the Government are taking, £1,125 million; and, putting one figure over the other, what is being spent on health warnings is one ten-thousandth part of the total tax revenue from tobacco. In other words, a tenth of one farthing of tax revenue is spent by the Government on warning people of the dreadful hazards associated with cigarette smoking.

1 seek to put no additional charge whatever on the taxpayer or on the tobacco manufacturer. I seek merely to print luridly and graphically on every container housing the cigarettes a warning about the consequences of smoking them. It may be argued that this is not original. It is done by Statute in the United States of America. I have a packet here—a dummy, of course—with the words on the end of the packet: Caution, cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health This is a British export cigarette pack to the United States, and that is why I have been able to obtain it in this country.

The form of words which I seek to print is not dissimilar but a little more powerful in character. It would be: These cigarettes can harm your health. Cigarettes are known to cause lung cancer, bronchitis and heart disease. I would specify that that warning should cover one-sixth of the superficial external area of the container and it would, therefore, be five times the size and much more lurid and graphic than the American warning, which is largely indecipherable.

521 However, the Americans have recognised the shortcoming of their own sta':ute. I quote from Mr. Charles Wheeler, the Washington correspondent of the 13.B.C., related in a broadcast on Radio 4 on the 8 a.m. news on Saturday. 3rd January, 1970: In 1968, when the population in America increased by 2 million, the consumption of cigarettes fell by 1,000 million. And then in the first half of 1969, cigarette consumption declined at three times the 1968 rate. The number of Americans who have given up smoking is unreliably estimated at 7 million, and the trend is attributed to warnings against cancer.… There is now a move in Congress to strengthen the warning by substituting the word ' is' for 'may be' and to make manufacturers use bigger type. No doubt prompted by the fact that my Bill has been given wide advance publicity in the Press, the Tobacco Research Council presented its report late yesterday and it featured in all the newspapers this morning. The frightening section of the report which I commend to every Member of the House who has any doubts as to the need for a measure of the kind which I recommend, is to be found at an early stage of the Daily Mail's report this morning as 'follows: A report "— that is, the report of the Tobacco Research Council— published yesterday says the average 15year-old girl who left school in 1968 smoked eight cigarettes a week. In 1961, the figure was only four a week. Girls in the 16–19 age group smoked 17 cigarettes a week in 1958. En 1968, the same age group were getting through 37. Fifteen-year-old boys smoked an average of 13 cigarettes a week in 1961. The figure was up to 19 in 1968. Therefore, there can be no reasonable doubt that the rate of cigarette smoking among the young is grievously increasing arid that little attention is paid to the 522 Chief Medical Officer of Health to the Department of Health and Social Security, Sir George Godber, who has given dire warnings in this connection, and particularly in these words: Those with the drooping cigarette habit had an annual mortality rate more than twelve times of that of non-smokers. As the British Safety Council says: It is outrageous that TV heroes like ' Man in a Suitcase ' should be seen with a cigarette dangling from their lips—thus associating smoking with virility and toughness. Surely we should all deprecate these grievous health trends which are entirely anti-social in character.

It is perfectly true that I have been interviewed on innumerable occasions for television and radio broadcasts about smoking habits. So that there should be no dubiety about my personal habits and my position as Member of Parliament, I declare it absolutely. I smoked continuously from the age of 14 to the age of 54. I renounced tobacco for life on the 23rd March, 1968, in the interests of personal longevity and the service of my constituents.