Incurable Addiction?

Ever since the Government report linking smoking with cancer and heart disease was first published in 1964, doctors and public health officials have waged a steady war against cigarettes. Now their efforts seem to be increasing. Last month Arizona became the first state to take legal action against tobacco by banning smoking in public places. Britain's Health Education Council, meanwhile, turned to shock tactics in its campaign against cigarettes. It released a poster showing a child dragging on a cigarette as he perched in his high chair. Its message: when a child breathes air filled with cigarette smoke, the result can be as bad as if he actually smoked himself.

Both the Arizona action and the British poster may help protect non-smokers from cigarette pollution. But if the experience of Columnist Joseph Alsop is any indication, neither is likely to have much impact on those now addicted to nicotine. Alsop, who is struggling to kick a four-pack-a-day habit, wrote earlier this month that matters requiring calculation, learning and judgment became "inordinately difficult or downright impossible" without the comfort of tobacco. Scores of readers wrote to tell him that they, too, suffered from what Alsop called the "incompetence syndrome," and were unable to do almost everything from working to playing bridge without cigarettes.

Fascinated by their response, Alsop asked Science Writer Edward Brecher, author of Licit and Illicit Drugs (Consumers Union, 1972), if doctors had studied this problem. Brecher, whose book describes tobacco as "one of the most physiologically damaging substances used by man," cited serious psychiatric and metabolic reports on the subject. For many smokers, psychological needs combine with nicotine addiction to produce a powerful dependency. Beyond that, he could empathize with Alsop. Brecher gave up cigarettes for 14 months, but started smoking again when he found that he simply could not work without them.

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