asked the Minister for Health what were the death rates from lung cancer during each of the years 1959 to 1962 inclusive.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Lung Cancer and Cigarette Smoking.
9.
In 1959 the death rate from lung cancer per 100,000 of the population was 21.1. In 1960 the rate was 22.9 and in 1961 it was 24.2.
Final figures for 1962 are not yet available but on the basis of the provisional figures, which may be taken as substantially correct, the death rate from lung cancer for that year was 25.0.
Lung cancer has been taken in the above figures as including cancer of the bronchus, trachea, lung, larynx, mediastinum and thoracic organs.
Does the Minister propose to take any further steps to bring to the notice of the public the great danger associated with cigarette smoking as a precursor to cancer ?
That supplementary will arise more relevantly on the next question.
10.
asked the Minister for Health whether he will make available in the Library the educational literature and advertisements in newspapers, on the radio or TV (a) for the young and (b) for adults, concerned with warning the public about the dangers of cancer of the lung which are associated with cigarette smoking, since the issuance of the Royal College of Physicians Report establishing this fact.
The Report of the Royal College of Physicians did not establish as a fact that there is a connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. The report was mainly a re-statement of the earlier evidence which went to show that there appeared to be a cause and effect relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
Special new publicity material was not prepared in this country as a result of the issue of this report, but considerable publicity was given to its findings and several references were made to the matter in this House— in particular, my reference to it in my speech introducing the current year's Estimate for my Department.
Here I may be pardoned if I remind the Deputy of what I said on that occasion, to wit:—
"... the trouble about smoking is that the decision to smoke or not to smoke is a personal one, to be taken by the individual. No nation has yet found an unfailing method of influencing the generality of its people to do what common sense dictates in the interest of personal health. Smoking is not a disease. It does not inevitably give rise to disease, and where it does, the disease is not communicable. It does not endanger the public safety; there is no turpitude attaching to it ; and it cannot be held to be contrary to public morality...."
Later, on that occasion, I said :—
"In educating the people as to the risks which smoking involves lies our best hope of reducing the incidence of lung cancer. But the educational programme must be framed with judgment and psychological discernment. Nothing would be more likely to evoke an adverse reaction than bellowing propaganda."
We address our propaganda quietly to those principally exposed to the risks associated with smoking. Copies of one leaflet, aimed at the growing generation, have been sent to every school in the country — primary, secondary, and vocational—and to youth clubs, boy scout organisations, the Junior Red Cross, and similar bodies. Copies of another, addressed to adults, are sent out, as a regular feature, to young parents. While I do not believe in cluttering up the Library with publications which are not calculated to assist Deputies in their functions as legislators and public representatives, in deference to the Deputy's insistence I am causing to be placed therein a sample of the leaflets in question.
I should like to say that quotations are excluded in supplementaries.
Could I now ask the Minister if it is not quite clear that the programme which he has initiated has been a failure in so far as it is not nearly as general as the programme undertaken by the tobacco manufacturers on the radio, television and in the newspapers? In view of this propaganda, the Minister's programme has become largely ineffective. He has a responsiblity to the public to tell them in a more effective way that the smoking of cigarettes is a great danger as a precursor to cancer and to warn them against it.
I have no reason to believe that the educational programme which I am pursuing with restraint and with a psychological appeal is ineffective.
You just thought that one up.
The Minister for Finance is against the whole lot of you. He does not want to lose the revenue.
Why are you bringing my name into it ?