The pipe was acquitted in the tobacco trial

London, October, 1965

Pipe tobacco was fully acquitted in the great trial which saw it in the dock together with cigarettes and cigars. The injured party in this case was all of humanity. The cigars were also acquitted while the cigarette was convicted of murder.
The English Ministry of Health, in its capacity as judge, having seen the documents and examined the evidence, holds her solely responsible for the crime and issues a severe sentence. It immediately prohibits the continued advertising of cigarettes of any kind, domestic or foreign, on television and orders the ITV television network to suspend its advertising sketches. The measure is not necessary with the two BBC channels as this sector of English TV has never advertised of any kind. The big cigarette brands will no longer spend the six million pounds a year (equal to ten and a half billion Italian lire) that they spent on advertising their products.
This drastic sentence instead allows the advertising of cigars and pipe tobacco since, as stated in the provisions of the new law, "these products do not cause lung cancer". The great condemnation therefore falls exclusively on the cigarette, the only one responsible for that terrible plague that It's lung cancer.
In this regard, it is interesting to read the statement released to the Commons by the Minister for Health, Sir Kenneth Robinson. « The number of victims of lung cancer has been rising in England in recent years. It was 23,940 people in 1961; of 24,860 in 1962; than 27,800 in 1963. In the first nine months of 1964 there were 20,850 deaths, a 5 percent increase over the same period the previous year. The phenomenon is all the more serious as the victims are often of young age. We are convinced that a high percentage of deaths are caused by excessive cigarette consumption. The Government has already adopted impressive measures to combat it: it has printed brochures, posters, ordered medical investigations and held conferences. But all this is not enough, indeed it becomes useless if the various brands are allowed to continue their massive and suggestive advertising on television. We have decided to abolish this advertising as soon as possible."
This declaration was made last February. At the end of July, after a battle that lasted many months, the English government approved the abolition of all forms of television advertising of any type of cigarette while allowing the companies affected by the measure to continue advertising their cigars and all the qualities of their pipe tobaccos.
But why pipe tobacco and cigarettes not? Is simple. The impressive group of doctors who had been in charge for years of conducting an investigation aimed at establishing, on the basis of investigations of all kinds, the degree of responsibility of tobacco in the spread of lung cancer, while gathering a mass against the cigarette irrefutable evidence, has not been able to find a single clue that could lead to the suspicion of pipe tobacco as complicity in the crime. None of the people who died from lung cancer, if it was established that the disease was due to excessive smoking, used to smoke a pipe. Some pipe smokers were among the victims but it was discovered that the pipe was only a diversion to the cigarette and it was ascertained that these people were actually cigarette smokers. Apart from these long and laborious statistical observations, laboratory tests and long studies carried out on human specimens of people who died from lung cancer made it possible to ascertain that the cigarette, with its direct action on the respiratory tract, was the number one component of terrible evil arises.
The doctors' opinion was also supported by acute observation by psychologists. The latter claim that the increasingly frenetic pace of modern life offers the cigarette an easy place to expand. Tobacco use is a vice that can be kept within acceptable proportions without prejudice to public health. But the cigarette, its practicality, its easy use in moments of tension, make any attempt to bring this vice back within the limits of tolerability in vain. Since it is not possible to go back and give life in modern times a more balanced course, we must ensure that the cigarette does not fit into this rhythm as a necessary component of current life. This is why the pipe, not suitable for following man in his vortex of nervous tension, but, indeed, very suitable for accompanying him in a voluntary action to rebalance his existence, will never be able to present a real threat in this respect.
The English government is now waging a second battle no less demanding than the one that led to the suppression of cigarette advertising on television. In fact, an attempt is being made to pass a law that prohibits such advertising in newspapers, magazines, on public transport and on city walls. It is a battle that must be won, a battle that a few must wage in the interests of the many.

Roy Clinton

Article taken from the magazine “Il club della pipa”. Year 1, n.1 October/November, 1965