View report page

106
About three months after the lectures I sent questionnaires to the
people concerned in order to find out what effect the lectures had
had. I felt that it was no good giving questionnaires immediately
after the lecture because people are usually influenced for a short
time, but the real assessment is what their reactions are some
months later. I found from the questionnaires that —
(a) the majority of people believed in the association between
smoking and cancer,
(b) in spite of this not all would like to give it up,
(c) those who said they would like to give it up found that they
could not because of the tendency for cigarette smoking to
produce habit formation.
(d) These results were common to all the social classes in Ilford.
It seems therefore that health education in and of itself is of
very little use when directed towards people who have already
acquired the habit of cigarette smoking. If we are to stop this habit
we need to use medical means such as the creation of a smokers'
clinic rather than educational means. Whether these clinics would
be effective in breaking the habit is open to question but at least
this appears to be the next step to take.
It must be realised that I did this survey before the report of
the Royal College of Physicians came out. The report has been
very well publicised through the mass media of newspapers and
television and it may have had some effect in reducing cigarette
smoking. The only factual evidence of this is that I have made
enquiries at several Ilford tobacconists who say that the number
of cigarettes they are now selling is less than it was before the
report came out.
From all this there are two future approaches to the cancer
problem:-
(1) The creation of clinics
(2) Continuation of health education in the schools to try to
vent the habit being acquired.
There is a long-term survey about to start in four schools in
Ilford in September of this year. We shall know nothing from this
survey for 4 or 5 years.