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Frederickson concedes that neither a few TV sessions nor present techniques guarantee success. He stopped smoking himself at medical school (Cornell '61) and became an authority in the field as director of the New York City Smoking Withdrawal Clinic in 1967. But the nighttime free clinics he ran drew so many thousands that the budget-pinched health department had to disband them. Frederickson thinks that the only solution is TV seminars. He believes that stations have a "public responsibility" to provide the air time, and that the ratings will take care of themselves. According to a U.S. Public Health Service survey, says Dr. Frederickson, some 18 million Americans are aching to break the cigarette habit.
WOR-TV's idea and Frederickson may have become habit-forming: National Educational Television is currently preparing a similar series for the fall, and the Triangle Stations group is getting ready to telecast five-minute segments in a series called How to Quit Smoking. The program supervisor is former Surgeon General Luther L. Terry, who issued the 1964 Public Health Service report indicting cigarettes.
*Last week the Boston Globe announced that it "will cease publication of cigarette advertising, because accumulated medical evidence has indicated that cigarette smoking is hazardous to health."