The Not-So-Full Monty

Whether it's Super 100's or the "silly millimeter longer" of the '60s, size has long been a marketing tool for cigarette companies, and a subliminal badge of virility for smokers. So imagine the dismay over a new British antismoking campaign whose thrust is that smoking can reduce the size of a man's erect penis.

A recessed filter for the hombre who'd rather fight than switch? A Marlboro un-manned? That's what researchers at the Boston University of Medicine are suggesting: A preliminary study of 200 male volunteers indicated that smokers' erections tended to be shorter. Enter the British antismoking lobby Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), which figures that men who laugh off the prospect of invisible killers such as heart and lung disease may be considerably less amused about the diminution of an organ closer at hand. A British smokers' rights group dismissed the campaign as a desperate ploy, citing the performance pressures such a test would have brought to bear on the hapless subjects.