TOBACCO: The Controversial Princess

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Now that tobaccomen can no longer sing, shout or advertise their superior claims to health protection, they are busy researching novelty in flavors, e.g., chocolate and peppermint. They are also using their cash reserves from high profits to diversify. Reynolds has already bought an aluminum-foil plant, Archer Aluminum, and Bowman Gray is looking for other companies to buy into, particularly in the consumer field. "We'd go into almost anything," he says, "except the mule trade." The industry looks to the future with confidence, not because it expects to be spared more crises—the next one could be definite proof that cigarettes cause cancer—but because it counts on the unchangeability of human nature. Based on the population growth and increased smoking by women, the industry expects cigarette production to rise 18% by 1965 to 570 billion cigarettes v. this year's 485 billion. If many smokers feel guilty about their bondage, they are apt to share Mark Twain's melancholy experience: "Smoking is easy to give up; I've done it hundreds of times." They are also liable to feel pretty bad-tempered. Another author became so testy when he gave up smoking that his wife finally stuck a lighted cigarette in his mouth and shouted, "Smoke, dammit, smoke!" That could well be the battle cry of the U.S. tobacco industry.