About Tobacco

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

SMOKE WITHOUT FEAR

IF you are a man or woman who smokes, relax and enjoy it. If you have tried to give up smoking a dozen times and failed, quit trying. If you have guilty feelings that you are weak-willed, immoral, and suicidal, begin anew to smoke with peace of mind. Smoke for the pleasure, comfort, relaxation or release you get out of it. Smoking satisfies some inner needs you have. These needs may be unexplainable, unreasonable, preposterous. We may create them ourselves and might be better off without them. However that may be, you continue to smoke because smoking gives you more satisfaction than not smoking. So, if you are a confirmed smoker, smoke without fear. Smoke like Sir James Barrie, who saw Peter Pan in a maze of smoke rings and captured that elfin spirit, to the eternal delight of English-speaking peoples. Sir James wrote thus of the glorious eruption of Elizabethan life: "I know, I feel, that with the introduction of tobacco England woke from a long sleep. Suddenly a new zest had been given to life. The glory of existence became a thing to speak of. Men who had hitherto concerned themselves with the narrow things of home put a pipe in their mouths and became philosophers. Poets and dramatists smoked until all ignoble ideas were driven from them, and into their place rushed such high thoughts as the world had not known before." Advice to smoke without fear may seem wildly irresponsible at the present time when the country is swept by a wave of hysteria about cigarettes. Smoking is said to lead to cancer and heart disease and to cut years off one's life. It is implied that every smoker would live longer if tobacco were to vanish from the earth, taking serious health problems along with it. We have a simple one-way formula for attaining mellow old age: never smoke.

It's hardly that simple. You may be, and should be, suspicious of advice to keep on smoking without constant anxiety. Who says so? Can anything good be said about tobacco? The purpose of this booklet is to examine the smoking question by drawing upon evidence that is widely scattered through the biological sciences. Accumulation of scientific facts is so enormous that no single human mind can grasp more than a fraction of them. Most of the cigarette scare reports are based on analysis or interpretation of statistics or individual experiments. The present booklet is an effort in synthesis--the bringing together of relevant facts that tend to be overlooked by specialists who are superbly competent in their own specialty.