For a Good 5d. Smoke

Britain's smokers, up against the almost prohibitive price of tobacco (TIME, April 28), clutched at any straw in the hope that it would be puffable.

Last week there was a run on herb stores for a smoking mixture (coltsfoot and clover leaf, scented with lavender or rose leaf) commonly used by sufferers from asthma or catarrh. Said London's deluxe tobacconist, Alfred Dunhill: "No self-respecting smoker would smoke a herbal mixture." But thousands of Britons were mixing the sweetish stuff with their pipe tobacco; it cost only fourpence an ounce, about one-tenth of the price of tobacco.

Tobacco sales were down to about half of normal. Hundreds of Britons had stopped smoking and thousands evidently wanted to stop. London's Daily Mail, which published a tongue-in-cheek account of a man's being hypnotized into a distaste for smoking, was swamped with letters from readers who wanted to be hypnotized too. Wrote an Evening Standard contributor: "Many have found that gargling with silver nitrate, swallowing bicarbonate, or well coating the palate with toffee or chewing gum are strong discouragements--to the extent that smoke can then be inhaled only at the risk of an explosion."

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