Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1968 [PAGE 474]

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422

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[February 9

Mr. President, it is now approximately twenty months since I introduced a motion to get the University of Illinois out of the cigarette pushing business. In that time, according to conservative medical statistics, more than 500 cigarette smokers have died every day of lung cancer in the United States. That becomes 15,000 lives lost a month for a total of more than 300,000 — perhaps a third of a million since we voted 8 — 2 to keep vending machines on the University premises. Imagine the outcry if we were losing that many lives in Vietnam or on the highways. Surely everyone of middle age in this room has lost one or more friends by lung cancer-smoking deaths in these twenty months. I can count at least a half dozen of my acquaintances in the newspaper field alone — lives unnecessarily shortened and hence to that extent partially wasted. Since this Board wastes money if it knowingly wastes parts of productive lives after large investment by the taxpayers in public education, I hope the Trustees will take another look at its own responsibility in this matter. I have been informed, in answer to a question, that the University has not purchased, leased, or rented a cigarette vending machine in the time since my motion was introduced in September, 1965. If that is so, could not this Board begin the formulation of a policy by limiting the number of vending machines to the present number, thus asserting it will add no more. Then could not the Board further say that it will not replace or repair a machine that breaks down? This would leave the University administration free to deploy its remaining machines. At the same time it would be a recognition of an eventual development — the fact that some day, as lung cancer and cigarette related illnesses skyrocket, the University along with all other colleges and universities will, under the force of public health pressure and demand, remove all its cigarette machines, as Harvard and the state universities and colleges in Kansas have done. Let it be emphasized, Mr. President, that the issue here is not the right to smoke. Let anyone buy his cigarettes by the pack, carton, case, or carload, but buy them at a commercial store and not at a tax-supported state university which is under no urgency to compete with private, profit-making enterprise in these sales. Mr. President, this is truly a matter of life or death for uncounted thousands of Liniversity of Illinois students. Lives are at stake here. Last October I attended a session of the Ninth World Cancer Congress in Tokyo, Japan. Although not all doctors agree, the medical profession as a whole considers that all the evidence it needs is in. Now it is seeking ways and means to prevent unnecessary loss of life by inducing young people not to start smoking. Because I believe in supporting medical and university research, I have asked the Secretary of the Board to obtain copies of Dr. Dunn's article and send to all Board members, including the incoming members as of next month. I also hand a copy of this statment to the Secretary and ask him, with your permission, to make it a part of the official printed minutes of this meeting. Thank you very much. Let me say finally that I am very glad to see so many students at this meeting of the Trustees. For this reason it is the most impressive and heartening meeting I have attended in the six years that I have been a Trustee. It looks as if I am leaving the Board at an exciting time.