I GAVE up smoking," said Associate Editor Ed Jamieson, as he put his finishing touches on this week's tobacco industry cover story.

He was hunched forward over his desk, collar open, tie loose, lips pursed around a smoldering king-size cigarette. "But I haven't made an issue out of it," he shrugged. "I fall from grace once in a while.

Why deny myself?" Writer Jamieson once needed up to three packs a day to smoke out a cover story (he has written 15) but he claims that he fueled this one with ten isolated cigarettes. "When I was writing about the psychological satisfactions of smoking, I'd happily light up," he said. "When I turned to the part on cancer, I'd sadly snuff it out." Business Editor Joe Purtell, who has smoked little since corn-silk days, takes a cigar "when given to me," smoked two while editing the cover story (both were gifts). Purtell's favorite smoking instrument is his ancient, 13-in. churchwarden, now held together by tobacco tar and Scotch tape.

"With this pipe I can lean over a typewriter and smoke won't get in my eyes." A pipe smoker of more regular habit, Correspondent Dudley Doust collected material on Bowman Gray and R. J. Reynolds during a 2 1/2 week visit to Winston-Salem, N.C., was strafed so steadily with fresh cigarettes that he puffed down about a pack a day -- "more than I've smoked since we made roll-your-owns out of cattails when I was a kid in Syracuse, New York." If the men who worked on TIME'S cover story are something less than fumaroles, the women make no secret of their affections. Head Business Researcher Mary Elizabeth Fremd burns up more than 20 cigarettes a day, prefers her smoke unfiltered. Researcher Piri Halasz, who went through hundreds of reports, pamphlets, company statements and books for Jamieson, has been a smoker since her freshman year at Manhattan's Barnard College: "I tried hard to start in high school, but I didn't like the taste." She now smokes at parties and at work. But she wouldn't think of smoking alone.

"We don't really need cigarettes anyway," said Writer Jamieson to his colleagues last week. Picking up a pencil, he put the upper end between his lips and dragged away.

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