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SOME VERY BIG CONTEMPORARY STORIES were covered in The Challenge in early 1964, including the first focused attacks on smoking* to appear in North America. There was no anti-smoking legislation before that, although concern had been expressed in both Canada and the States about the harm cigarettes did. A few regional campaigns went nowhere. Not surprisingly, it took an American with a convincing title to get the attention needed to inspire a sustained large-scale attack.
That attracted the attention of our non-Catholic associate editor, the one with fingers stained brown by chain-smoking. He reviewed many RC statements about the habit in a very long piece excerpted below. Note the use of both 'cigaret' (U.S.) and 'cigarette' (UK). That proves the article was written in Canada!
"Moral Issue? Cigarets Still Up In The Air
"By HUGH MacLEOD
"The [January 1964] report of the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health said 'Cigaret smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.' This was the latest in a series of official attacks on cigarette smoking by doctors and scientists in several countries.
"The tobacco trade insists cigaret smoking is not a proven health hazard.
"Another body of opinion asked 'Has cigaret smoking become a spiritual hazard?' In Newark, New Jersey, Rev. A.J. Welsh said that a Catholic who fails to make a reasonable attempt to stop smoking is committing a sin by 'unnecessarily incurring...a danger to his health'. He emphasized, however, that it is not possible to offer one simple judgment on the morality of smoking.
"In Baltimore, Maryland, The Catholic Review asked priests to stop smoking.
"America, the authoritative Jesuit weekly, urged 'now is the time to face honestly and squarely the moral issues created by this high-powered and widespread hazard to health.' It adds that there should be soul-searching all along Madison Avenue over the ethics of advertising a product injurious to health.
"In Montreal Rev. Eric O'Connor, S.J., president and director of studies at Thomas More Institute [for continuing education], says those remarks are 'individual opinions thrown into the pot for discussion.' He was concerned that some people might take them as official Church doctrine."
Hugh noted The Canadian Register's comments: "An editorial titled REALLY COFFIN NAILS?" respectfully rebuts Rev. Francis O'Connell, prominent American theologian who warned that "excessive cigarette smoking must be considered sinful, sometimes even gravely so." The Register commented "We question whether sufficient evidence has yet been adduced to justify his statement."
[The title sounds like Bill DeMeza, a smoker. The last line sounds as if he wasn't planning to quit.]
Hugh concluded "Tobacco men, medicine men and men-of-God are taking sides. And caught right in the middle is that profuse, pack-a-day species...the smoker. Filter tip and all."
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My parents and most of their friends smoked, and from age 12 I occasionally stole cigarettes, but didn't take them seriously. At the University of Toronto, at Carleton, through summer jobs, especially in the Tely's smoggy newsroom, I couldn't be bothered buying them, having something to light them with, dealing with butts. Unfortunately, at age 22, during the three weeks of the communist youth festival in Vienna in 1959 (Chapter 13), I was surrounded by smokers and seriously short of sleep. I bought a package of unfiltered Gauloises and began smoking daily, claiming they kept me awake. A few years later I was saying they helped me fall asleep.
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