Tobacco Documents Online

1985. JA(;KgpN CITIZEN PATii1OT. TMURSOAY. JUNE 27. 1985. B~ttei* educated .l'ust don't smoke J ' ATLANTA (UPI) - Health sound a death knell for the indus- experts report there is a strong try. relationship between smoking and A smoking study released education and say damage suits Wednesday by the national Cen- against cigarette companies may ters for Disease Control found `~ people with a high school educa- tion were more likely to smoke than those with a college educa- tion. ,' But the CDC mudy but noted young women are an exception to the strong relationship between education and smoking. - Other health experts assembled by former' President Jimmy kCarter to study premature death a issued a report Wednesday noting ~ a federal judge iri New Jersey had ruled pebple have the right to sue . lover tobacco-related injuries. "The judge ruled people in- : jured from tobacco and who claim the warnings on• cigarette ° packs are not adequate are enti- tled to the right to present their .. claims for adjudication," the re- port port said. "If a number of lawsuits are successful,ithe cigarette industry ' could follow the asbestos industry and find it cannot afford to man- uf~cture cigarettes because the pn e is too high, ^ the Carter Cen- ter report said. The CDC study found 49 per-. cent of men and 42 percent of : women with some high school " education smoked, but only 17 percent of men and 13 percent of women with college graduate de- grees smoked. "- "If you look at the highest edu- cation and the highest profession- al levels, you tend to see substan- tially diminished rates of I smoking," said Dr. Kenneth ' Warner of the University of Michigan, who participated in the study. "Basically, the individuals with higher education are responding in larger numbers to the evidence that smoking is a health hazard," he said. IIr. ' Dtnnis Tolsnii 'of the CDC's education branch said 70 percent of men ages 30 to 40 smoked before the surgeon gener- al's first cigarette warning in 1964 - twice today's number. "There has been a significant amount of smoking cessation dur- ing that period," he said. "More of it obviously has occurred among those with higher educa- tion." But the CDC said an estimated 29 percent of American women still smoke - a decrease of just S percent - and some studies show increasing numbers of women in their 20s are taking up the habit. "This is a cause for great con- cern and we don't have any reason for it,"Tolsma said. The Carter Center reported 1,000 people a-day die from dis- eases related to cigarette smoking and said, "We must make non- smoking the social norm." The Carter Center report rec- ommended the licensing of ciga- rette sales, encouraged the elimi- nation of cigarette vending machines and urged hospitals to abolish the sale of tobacco pro- ducts. . . JuL 10 1495