RADIO TV REPORTS, inc. 4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 (301) 656-4068 For THE TOBACCO INSTITUTE, INC. PROGRAM Good Morning America SMON —-WILA_TV ABC Network DAE January 11, 1989 7:38 AM on Washington, DC ‘suBsECT Interview with Brennan Dawson and Dr. Timothy Johnson JOAN LUNDEN: Twenty-five years ago today the first Surgeon General's report on smoking was issued. It was the first time our government officially told us that cigarette smoking is hazardous to our health. Since the more and more adult Americans have kicked the habit, but even still smoking is believed to cause an estimated one thousand deaths in this country every day. And the controversy over the rights of smokers continues to swirl. We're going to take a look at all of this this morning with Dr. Timothy Johnson, who is our medical editor; and also with Brennan Dawson, who is the assistant to the president of the Tobacco Institute. She joins us from Washington. And we welcome both of you. And Tim, maybe you'll start us out by kind of setting the stage. What do we know today, scientifically? DR. TIMOTHY JOHNSON: Mell, the Tobacco Institute likes to say that we still haven't proven the link between smoking and all of the diseases it causes. But if there is one thing that physicians and medical scientists agree upon it is that smoking is a major causative factor of many diseases, most importantly heart attacks, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive lung disease, or emphysema. That it contributes and causes to over a thousand premature deaths a day. That's the equivalent to three jumbo jets dropping out of the sky every single day in this country. We don't get captured by smoking deaths because they occur in individuals slow and chronic fashion and they are therefore not as dramatic. But the devastation wrought by COFRCES IN: WASHINGION D.C. © NEWYORK © LOSANGELES @ CHICAGO © ERO © AND OTHER PRINCPAL CIES cas pote by ao Repotk re: may be wd oon ees pose ey. ay a ered Ske pL deena or aNete TIMN 3894742 smoking is far greater than any other single health factor we know. And so scientifically we all agree upon this. What we have also learned, of course, in recent years that makes it even more of a problem is that smoking is a terribly addictive problem, that people not only start it for the wrong reasons but become hooked in a way so that when they want to quit they can't quit easily. It is very addictive. There are forty-three chemicals in smoke that are proven to be cancer causing agents in animals. LUNDEN: Ms. Dawson, when you listen to this I'm sure that there are many, many people at home saying okay, now we want to know how can you -- how can the tobacco industry justify the product itself, much less aggressive advertising campaigns. BRENNAN DAWSON: Well, I think that's a good question and I think it's worth pointing out that all the links that have been established between smoking and certain diseases are based on statistics. What that means is that the causative relationship has not yet been established. But perhaps more importantly than that we have to look at the universal awareness that the American public has about what the Surgeon General, for example, has to say about smoking, so we have a very informed public about the potential risk factor involved with smoking. And yet more than fifty million Americans make an informed choice to be smokers. What we're talking about in the United States right now is an anti-smoking movement that's trying to seek a smoke-free society by the year 2000. This is not done through educational means but rather it's a political and social agenda that's very much putting very basic values and freedoms at risk through their maneuvering. LUNDEN: Go ahead. DR. JOHNSON: Well, I just can't help but smile when they talk about fifty million smokers making an informed choice to smoke as though they all sat down as adults, sat down, listened to the evidence, reasoned back and forth and then made a rational choice to start smoking. In fact, what we know happens is that the vast majority of smokers start as kids and teenagers, they are not making rational, informed choices, they are making choices under the pressure of peer pressure and. led by seductive, sexy advertising. And then when they do become adults they spend the rest of their life trying to kick this addictive habit. So they're not making free choices to begin with, and they don't have a very free choice to quit even when they want. to. TIMN 3894753 LUNDEN: ...called uninformed choices. Most of the surveys, you must admit, Miss Dawson, do show that the majority of the smokers are the poorer people, the less educated people, the younger people. So many would say aren't you directing your ads to this group of people who are much more likely to succumb? DAWSON: I can't allow the claim that smoking is addictive to go unchallenged. As you correctly pointed out in the beginning of this segment, you know, more than forty million Americans have quit smoking, and the Surgeon General tells us that ninety-five percent of those people have done it on their own, they haven't gone for formal treatment or even asked for the help of their friends or family. These are people who made a decision to quit smoking, put down their cigarettes and walked away from it The majority of people who smoke make that decision, they can quit if they want to it. It's a matter of willpower. Now, if we look at who smokes, there are some differences in socio-demographic groups, but to say that that is somehow wrong is to be very paternalistic. And that is to say that there are certain groups in our society that are not as smart as others... DR. JOHNSON: We're not saying... DAWSON: ...make the same decisions. LUNDEN: All right. Basically she is saying that -- even in Koop's report now it says that the adult American smoking dropped from forty to twenty-nine percent, so if the information is out there why not let people make their own choice. DAWSON: Absolutely. LUNDEN: That's what she's asking. DR. JOHNSON: Yeah. And I'm perfectly agreeable to that as adults. Let's say that we don't have any advertising, that we sit down with people when they turn age twenty-one and say, now here's all the evidence of smoking, make your informed choice I'll buy that. That's not what the tobacco industry wants at all, of course, because they know that most people, when they have full information as adults will chose not to smoke, and in fact, I don't know who she talks to, but every single smoker I encounter would like to quit, has a desperate time quitting. Some have been fortunate to quit after two, three, or four, five tries. TIMN 389476