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Show Battle Creek ' " Sir Walter Raleigh really started start-ed something. It was back in the early 1600's, so the story goes, that the English dandy visited America and returned with a supply sup-ply of Indian-grown tobacco. In fact, Sir Walter had tampered with the weed at odd moments , while over here and no doubt continued the practice on shipboard ship-board during the trip home. At any rate, he introduced pipe smoking among his cronies at the court of -Queen Elizabeth I and things went on from there. Since Sir Walter stood number one in the list of the numerous lovers of England's "Virgin Queen" the habit received the royal stamp of approval. Anybody Any-body who was anybody, was soon burning up all the pungent weed they could lay their hands on. Before they knew what was happening they were "hooked," and had to have the stuff every day come hail or high water. It was no time at all until tobacco was one of the chief items of commerce from the New World. Since the culture of tobacco was impossible in England due to the cool and rainy climate, plantations plan-tations were established in the West Indies, Central America and later in the Southern States of the new Democracy. To provide a plentiful and cheap labor force and a supply of workers -who could toil in the hot and humid tobacco fields, the traffic in African slaves was established. es-tablished. And from this venture stems the racial problems, which have plagued the American people since the) days of Abraham Abra-ham Lincoln. And the impacts of Sir Walter's innocent innovation are still growing. According to the report of the Tobacco Tax Council cigarette smoking in Utah for June 1960 was up 17.6 per cent over the consumption for the same month a year ago. During June this year, $239,085 was paid in cigarette taxes by Utahns, the report shows. And the total cigarette taxes in June in all of the 50 states of the Union was $89,651,666. , Difficult as it is to believe, the report reveals that the Utah cigarette consumption increase for June 1960 was more than twice the national average. Packages Pack-ages sold during the month totaled total-ed 5,977,000 in Utah and 1,892,-843,000 1,892,-843,000 nationally. For those who like to play around with figures in the space age, we submit the following calculations: cal-culations: Enough cigarettes were smoked last June in the United States, if layed end to end, to reach from the earth to the sun and 8,000 miles on the way back. Any way you look at it, Sir Walter started something and to date no wisemen have been smart enough to do anytliing about it. So long 'til Thursday. |