Last June While We Were Touring One...

Last June while we were touring one of the missions of the Church in the eastern part of the United States, we stopped one morning about 8 o'clock to get breakfast at a cafe. This cafe was located just a half block from a junior high school. As we were sitting there eating our breakfast, about a dozen of these junior high school students came into the cafe and played some records and lounged about for a few minutes waiting for school to start. ¶

They were on their way to school. I noticed that every one of these boys and girls, who seemed to be about fourteen years of age, smoked cigarets. ¶

I was struck even more by the manner in which they smoked than by the fact that they were smoking; such a bravado type of spirit — a show-off — giving everybody the impression, apparently, that now they were grown up; now that they could smoke cigarets they had "arrived." ¶

That night before going to bed I picked up a magazine in the hotel, and on the back page of the magazine was a full page advertisement. It showed a husky looking man, apparently in the bloom of health, smoking a cigaret. ¶

The caption across the ad said: "Where there's a man there's a cigaret." ¶

I do not give the name. ¶

As I read that ad my mind flashed back immediately to those boys and girls in the cafe. I wondered if they had read that ad. I wondered if they thought that "Where there's a man there's a cigaret." I wondered if they got the idea that cigarets make the man, that cigarets make the woman. Then I began to ask myself whether these boys and girls would suppose that they would be lacking in manhood or womanhood if they did not smoke? ¶

Young people, do you believe that you would lack in manhood or womanhood if you did not smoke? Would you believe, for instance, that President Eisenhower is any less a man because on doctor's orders he quit smoking? Would any of you believe that President Harry S Truman was any less a man because he refused to smoke? Would any of you believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was any less a man because he responded to the advice of his. doctors with respect to smoking, and then even later tried to persuade his biographer, Harry Hopkins, to do likewise? ¶

Would any of you believe that Carl Sandburg, the Lincoln biographer, is any less a man because he will not smoke? Would you believe it of Governor Harriman of New York, or Bernard Gimbel, the head of the great Gimbel Department Store in New York City? ¶

Would you believe that Lyndon B. ¶

Johnson, majority leader of the United States Senate, is any less a man because he will not smoke? Do you believe that J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, is any less a man because he neither smokes nor drinks? Or a man like Charles Boyer of the movies, or TV personalities such as Victor Borge and Pat Boone? Do you believe the kind of advertising that is put out by the tobacco people? ¶

The United States Congress made an investigation of cigaret advertising, and after their investigation they published a report known as "False and Misleading Advertising," having to do with filter-tip cigarets. It was published by a committee on Government Operations of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress on February 20, 1958. It was published by the United States government in the Government Printing House and paid for by government money. I would like to read just an excerpt or two from it. The Hon. ¶

Robert T. Secrest, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, was one of the men who gave testimony in connection with this investigation, and among other things he said that the Surgeon General's recent statement that "excessive cigaret smoking is one of the causative factors in lung cancer" calls for a "new approach" by the commission in its regulation of cigaret advertising. ¶

Then the report goes on to say this: ¶

"The cigaret industry has done a grave disservice to the smoking public, initially, blatantly, and more recently, very subtly, publicizing the filter-tip smoke as a health protection. . . . ¶

"Despite repeated private and even public invitations to appear before the subcommittee, the tobacco industry refused all such invitations. In one instance the invitation was accepted only to be declined later because of a 'previous engagement,' when it was learned no other tobacco-company official would appear. ¶

"During a period fraught with public concern over grave health implications of cigaret smoking, business responsibility and even decency would apparently dictate that the American public is entitled to an accounting from the cigaret manufacturers. It is indeed most reprehensible that the tobacco industry should so shirk its vast responsibilities to the consumer and apparently conspire to boycott the hearings of a congressional committee." ¶

I am sure your congressman would send you a copy of this if you were interested in it. It is Union Calendar No. 539, House Report No. 1372. ¶

Young people, in the face of things like that, do you believe cigaret advertising? Do you believe that cigarets make the man, or that cigarets make the woman? What makes a man? ¶

What makes a woman? Is it the cigaret or the cocktail, or is it the clean life, the development of good character, faith in God, and keeping his commandments? ¶

Young people, be honest with yourselves. Answer these questions. Believe in God. Serve him. Uphold the program of the Church, and you will live wonderful, happy lives. That you may do this is my earnest prayer, in Jesus' name. Amen. ¶