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SMOKE ABATEMENT Richard Gordan Reprinted with permission fromPunch,Feb. 24, 1954.—Ed. Smoking has a particularly strong appeal to the British public because it is our only vice which is wholly respectable. Clergymen puff away blamelessly, in life and in advertisement; school-masters bathe their corrected exercises in rich blue clouds; dons traditionally pickle their undergraduates with latakia. Nothing creates an appearance of thoughtfulness, solidarity, and honesty in the British mind more powerfully than a pipe. Politicians who would rather defy a Whip than be spied by their constituents holding a glass, pose proudly for photographs with their smoking insignia. What Englishman can picture a safe-cracker pausing at his job to relight his favourite briar? And who thinks the worse of Sherlock Holmes for continuously filling himself with noxious agents by the mighty bowlful? The discovery of the spoil-sport statisticians that smoking is really a more dangerous pastime than speedway racing has already propelled quiet ripples of confusion through the

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