THE PRESIDENCY: The Politics of Tobacco

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While Carter may have helped his standing in North Carolina, there was some question about what effect all this will have in the rest of the country, where three quarters of the people do not smoke, and where 80% of the 53 million cigarette smokers, says HEW, would like to quit if they could. Back in Washington, Nonsmoker Carter has put his Administration firmly behind preventive medicine. The evidence amassed by HEW stands like an Everest on this health horizon. Cigarette smoking is considered by federal authorities the biggest acquired cause of poor health. They claim that 320,000 people died prematurely last year because of cigarette smoking. Beyond that the American Medical Association has just released the results of nearly 800 studies conducted over the past 14 years that add up to one of the broadest and most damning indictments of smoking yet. Even though financed by the tobacco industry, it concludes that in addition to the well-documented dangers of cancer, cigarette smoking "plays an important role" in the development of chronic lung diseases, is a "grave danger" to anybody with a disease of the coronary arteries, may produce peptic ulcers and make smokers more susceptible to infections. Next January the Surgeon General will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first report on smoking with a massive new report summarizing everything learned over these years. It is expected to give the antismoking campaign another big push.

In the middle, once again, is Jimmy Carter, urging his Government to spread the gospel against cigarette smoking but at the same time telling the good folks who grow the leaf how nice it is that they have such a good crop. On the cigarette, for the moment, Carter stands for just about nothing.