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What Kind Of Smoke-Quitter Are You?By BRUCE LEVETTCanadian Pr**» Staff WritarAli right, so you’ve read ailthose statistics about cigarettesand lung cancer. What have youdone about it?You’ve quit? You don’t intend to quit?Oh, you'll quit tomorrow.Well, you can make up your nnnd content in the knowledge that however you decide you'll be able to identify with some of the country’s most prominentfigures.The Canadian Press, in a Cross - Canada Survey, found there are sneaky quitters, frightened quitters, tentative quitters and a whole raft of categories which boiled down to not quitting at all.Tl»e sneaks swore off, but filch cigarettes and blow the smoke up the fan over thekitchen range.The timid souls come from the “1 just totalled up those statistics’* category.And then there is the vacillating I just quit—who's got a cigarette?” bunch. *Two of the most strident anti-cigarette statements in the survey came from women. The voice of sweet persuasion was male.Mrs. Lois Haggen, New Democratic Party member for Grand Forks-Greenwood, said in the British Columbia legislature she wouldn’t vote a penny to help smokers stop puffing.Let them use wii-power. Maybe we can put them all in a room with some bleach anddisinfectant They could form Smokers Anonymous.Health Minister Judy LaMarsh says such agencies as the national health and welfare department have a duty to inform the public about the riskto health connected with cigarette smoking.Possibly conferences wouldhave to be held to tailor the advertising to fit the program, but:Oral-audio seduction, if it exists, I hope will be withdrawnvoluntarily.Quiet Barry Mather, federal member for New Westminster, is a partv-mate of Mrs. Haggen, with a different approach.He stopped smoking 10 years ago and formed the Never-touchem Club whose emblem is a little man with crossed fingers below a halo of smoke.He has crossed all party lines on Parliament Hill to hand out his buttons and recruit convertsto his Non-Smokers’ Association of Canada, to whom he refers as souls being snatched from the burning.The Social Credit governmentof B.C. grants the association $1,000 a year and distributes its literature through the high schools.Mr Mather has a private bill before Parliament to restrain the use of tobacco.On the other side of the parliamentary argument stands Jack Roxburgh, former president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association and Liberal member for Norfolk, the heartof Ontario’s tobacco country. He wants bigger federal grants for research into production and processing to keep the tobacco industry — pardon the word— healthy. IE ISpSl;ffS-iIn the same vein. Marketing Director Wiimat Tennyson of Rothman's of PalJ Mall, declares: .. •'*As tobacco people we have a natural interest in protecting the economic welfare of many people who arc dependent on tobacco from irresponsible and hasty actions on the part of well - meaning but misguided people.” . ;In the Tennyson misguided category stands the president of the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. William W. Wigle of Toronto, who says flatly;“I believe that smoking is dangerous ”—though he himself is a social smoker who has a cigarette in the evenings fromtime to time ” »Lloyd Percival, fitness expert and track and field coach, is a cigarette smoker despite his finding in recent tests that you are better off if you don’t smoke.I would prefer to smoke a pipe, but I need a new bridge and a pipe is uncomfortable. he says.Dick Shatto, Toronto Argonaut backfield star, says he was told as an athletic - minded youngster that smoking was bad for the wind so he never started.I have never had the urge to smoke. he says. I don't know why.”But Jim Trimble, coach of the rival Montreal Aloucttes of theEastern Football Conference, has smoked 15 cigarettes a day for 20 years and doesn’t intend to stop.I figure there are a lot of other ways to get into worsecondition.”Dave Skrien. coach of British Columbia Lions in the West, feels otherwise and imparti that feeling to his players: Never smoke, never did. Don’t like players smoking. Restricts breath; never felt it was necessary to start smoking Gordie Drillon of Saint John, N.B., former National Hockey Leaguer with Toronto and Montreal:“I smoke lVi packs a day and never tried to quit. My weight is 235. It would go up if I stopped.Howie Meeker, former NHL Mar with Toronto:I have never smoked. When I was just a kid I was at a father-son banquet where Syl Apps was guest speaker and was at the age when anything Syl Apps said really sank in. He said smoking doesn't do youany good. . .Frank Boucher, who went from NHL player to commissioner of the Saskatchew anJunior Hockey League, smokes but says I don’t Jiink it's going to hurt me.”I smoke only half of each cigarette. All the tar and nicotine collects in the half 1 don't smoke.Hec Gervais. the farmer fromSt. Albert, Alta., who won the Canadian curling title in 1960, smokes a cigarette for almost every end I play and is not convinced the cigarette-oancer link has been proved.Frank Pellerin, manager of the Charlottetown Hotel, gavo up in a pact with his wife.“I was coughing my head off. One night we decided to stop. Then she wouldn’t start again because I hadn’t and I couldn’t start again because she didn't.”The stalemate has lasted two years.Mrs. E. J. Mooney, Saint John, N B , vice-president of the National Federation of Liberal Women, can quit smoking, butshe won't.There's nothing I find moro relaxing than to have a book and a cigarette. I don't doubt it's dangerous but practically every thing we do is dangerous.”At one time she quit for aaentire year, just to prove shemild.How about those politicians ia the smoke-filled back room?”Not on the West Coast.There isn't a single cigarette smoker among the members of Premier W. A. C. Bennett's cab-inet. .. ,An example is Highways Minister Philip Gaglardi:I had smoked for years before I gave it up. 1 decided it was a matter of conscience. Itwasn't the right thing to do.If we were intended to be smoking, we’d be built like houses—with chimneys.
Newspaper Details
Brandon Sun
Brandon, Manitoba, CA
Mon, Apr 20, 1964
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Jason P.
USA 18 Dec 2018
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