Part 1

Is Smoking Here to Stay?

MOST people on earth either smoke or are, at some time, exposed to the smoking of others. Practically everywhere people live, cigarette smoking especially is an entrenched habit.

Thus, when the Tasaday tribe was discovered in a Philippine rain forest a few years ago, their unfamiliarity with tobacco was regarded as strong proof of extraordinary isolation. Yet cigarettes are of relatively recent origin.

A Short History

Less than 500 years ago Christopher Columbus became the first European to encounter the smoking habit. Indians in the New World smoked tobacco in pipes. By the 1600’s Europeans were smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Then, in the 1880’s, the first efficient cigarette-making machine was invented.

It was especially during World War I that cigarette smoking gained widespread popularity. And it is only in the last 40 years or so that women generally have begun smoking. Now cigarette use is phenomenal.

A Booming Industry

During 1978 some 4,200,000,000,000 cigarettes were produced! That is enough cigarettes for each man, woman and child on earth to smoke nearly three every day, or 1,000 a year! Since about half of earth’s population is under 20, that is 2,000 cigarettes a year for every adult member of the human family!

In China alone hundreds of millions smoke. Also, more than 55 million do so in the United States, 34 million in Japan, 18 million in Britain, and so on. It is not unusual for a person to smoke 10,000 or more cigarettes a year. Surely, you may assume, such a popular habit is here to stay. Yet some believe otherwise.

A cigarette industry executive said: “We’re preparing to phase out tobacco. Not next year, but perhaps in 20 years.” United States cigarette companies have also moved into other enterprises. All of them have dropped the word “tobacco” from their company names.

John Pinney, director of the U.S. Office of Smoking and Health, claims: “Smoking is going out of style.” Why would he say this about a habit to which a major part of the human family is addicted?

Exposing a Killer

“We are in a new age of pandemics,” wrote Dr. Jean Mayer. Nearly half the men in Western countries are dying of heart disease, and cancer kills many of the rest. Cigarette smoking, evidence reveals, is a major cause of these terrible plagues.

The British Royal College of Physicians called smoking “as important a cause of death as were the great epidemic diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and tuberculosis.” The U.S. Public Health Service says that smoking is our “foremost cause of preventable disease and death.”

The evidence has kept accumulating. In January 1979 the U.S. surgeon general released a report on smoking, citing 30,000 research papers as references. “Cigarette smoking,” said the report, “is the single most preventable environmental factor contributing to illness, disability, and death in the United States.” Commenting editorially on the report, the New York Times noted: “The weeds are killing more than 350,000 Americans each year.”

The U.S. surgeon general’s report in 1980 highlighted smoking’s disastrous effects on women, who started more recently to smoke en masse. “The first signs of an epidemic of smoking-related disease among women are now appearing,” it said. “Within three years, the lung-cancer rate is expected to surpass that of breast cancer.”

Dr. Halfdan Mahler, director general of the World Health Organization, said last March: “Smoking is probably the largest single preventable cause of ill health in the world.”

If you were a smoker and hundreds of respected medical authorities told you such things about your habit, what would you do?

Going Out of Style?

Tens of millions of smokers, responding to the evidence, have stopped smoking. In the United States alone there are some 30 million ex-smokers. Most men in the U.S. smoked in 1965, but by 1979 less than 37 percent did. During this period, even the number of women smokers dropped from 32 percent to 28 percent. More than half of Canada’s adult population smoked in 1965; now less than 42 percent do.

Yes, many smokers have been helped to quit. In 1978, 2,000,000,000 fewer cigarettes were consumed in the United States than in the previous year. Optimistically, Daniel Horn of the National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health proclaimed: “The war against smoking is won. All that remains is mopping up.” But is this true?

Not by a long shot! As an official of the Tobacco Institute responded: “We don’t intend to sit idly by and watch our industry be destroyed.” So $875 million (U.S.) was spent in a recent year on cigarette advertising, more than was spent on any other product sold in the United States. Actually, the 2,000,000,000 decline in U.S. cigarette consumption was only from 617 billion cigarettes to 615 billion, less than one third of 1 percent decrease.

The fact is, the cigarette industry continues to grow, as new markets are exploited in so-called Third World countries. In a recent year the U.S. increased its tobacco exports by more than 20 percent! Thus 100 billion more cigarettes were produced worldwide in 1978 than in 1977.

To ensure that smoking doesn’t go out of style, the tobacco industry has exploited another market​—the young. As psychologist Dr. Ronald Shor explains: “Teenagers are trying to find meaningful adult identities and they are trying to find a way to live happy and normal adult lives without having to give up their youthful spirit. That’s exactly what the [cigarette] ads say being a smoker can do for you.”

Thus 6,000,000 U.S. youths under 20 now smoke. A larger percentage evidently do in other countries, as the World Health magazine observes: “In Belgium, 50 per cent of the young people smoke by the age of 15. In the Federal Republic of Germany, 36 per cent of the 10- to 12-year-olds are already confirmed, regular smokers.”

But why is a product known to cause terrible diseases not prohibited, rather than blatantly advertised as being good for you? And, if the dangers of smoking are so well established, why do so many millions continue to smoke?

[Pictures on page 6]

“The first signs of an epidemic of smoking-related disease among women are now appearing”

Teenagers, searching for adult identities, are exploited by the tobacco industry

Part 2

Why Smoking is So Popular

DESPITE health warnings and antismoking campaigns, smoking is still very popular. In fact, many persons smoke more than they did before.

From 1965 to 1978, the number of cigarettes used in the United States leaped by nearly 90,000,000,000, yet the number of smokers remained about the same. Why the increased consumption by those who smoke?

Nicotine and Tar Content

The reduced content of nicotine and tar in cigarettes is apparently a factor. Nicotine, an important ingredient of smoking tobacco, is a poisonous drug used commercially in insecticides. And tar is the particulate matter of the smoke, also called “the sticky residue of tobacco smoke.” Because nicotine and tar are dangerous to health, tobacco companies have been cutting down on the amounts in their cigarettes. With what results?

One is that smokers tend to smoke more cigarettes. “In preliminary experiments,” reports Medical World News, “seven heavy cigarette smokers smoked an average of 25% more cigarettes per day when shifted to a low-nicotine brand.” Dr. Stanley Schachter, who conducted the experiments, therefore concludes that “the campaign for low-nicotine cigarettes is misguided.”

But why are more cigarettes smoked when the nicotine and tar levels are lower? In particular, it is to satisfy the smoker’s craving for nicotine​—to get the amount to which he has been accustomed. The nicotine reaches the brain within a few seconds after the smoker inhales. So each puff, Dr. Michael A. H. Russell explains, represents a unit dose of nicotine. It is, he says in Drug Metabolism Reviews (1978), like getting an injection of heroin.

A heroin addict may go several hours before he craves another injection. After smoking a cigarette, it takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the nicotine to dissipate from the brain to other organs. That is about the time lag between cigarettes for heavy smokers​—when another “injection” of nicotine is needed.

Yet is it fair to compare the craving for a cigarette to that for heroin? Is nicotine really addictive?

Is Smoking an Addiction?

Commonly, persons say they smoke because it relaxes them, relieves stress and makes them feel calm. But experiments show that, rather than actually relaxing the smoker, smoking simply enables the smoker to ward off adverse withdrawal symptoms.

This fact was revealed when both nonsmokers and smokers were exposed to stressful situations. Smokers who smoked high-nicotine cigarettes fared better in such situations than when they smoked low-nicotine cigarettes or none at all. But they fared neither better nor worse than nonsmokers in the same situations. The conclusion: “Smoking doesn’t make a smoker less irritable or vulnerable to annoyance,” Dr. Schachter said. However, he added, “not smoking or insufficient nicotine makes him more irritable.”

Just as a heroin addict needs heroin to ward off irritability and other such symptoms, so a smoker needs his nicotine for a similar reason.

Cigarette smoking is now considered by authorities to be a form of addiction. According to the report Smoking or Health by the British Royal College of Physicians, it “is a form of drug dependence different from but no less strong than that of other addictive drugs.” The report concludes: “Most smokers continue to indulge in the habit because they are addicted to nicotine.”

Dr. M. A. H. Russell, on the basis of considerable research, states plainly: “If it were not for nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke cigarettes than to blow bubbles or light sparklers.” Although other factors may also be involved in making the habit so entrenched, obviously many smokers are physically addicted. This is evidenced by their agony when they go without cigarettes. Describing his withdrawal, Budd Whitebook wrote in Harper’s magazine:

“My body was sicker than I thought it could be. The joints in my arms and shoulders and the muscles in my chest and my calves hurt so badly the first night I hid in the dark and cried. That pain lasted only one day, but for at least a week I was always aching somewhere. My mouth, nose, throat, stomach, and each tooth were deprived of smoke and nicotine, and their reactions lasted much longer. I kept arching my mouth wide open as if adjusting cheap store-bought teeth. My throat was sore as if I had smoked too much, perhaps from inhaling too hard on an absent cigarette. I blew my nose needlessly. It is staggering how many parts of me​—phalange, organ, membrane, and hair—​wanted a smoke, each in its own sore way. For two full weeks I was nauseated.”

‘Isn’t it criminal,’ you may ask, ‘to promote a habit that is so addictive and harmful to health?’ Why is it done?

Anything for Money

Even persons considered kind and respectable are known to do practically anything for money. Yes, they will even kill. Governments at times go to war, sacrificing many lives, in order selfishly to protect economic interests. Could there be a parallel with the promotion of cigarette smoking?

The Medical Tribune states: “Cigarettes are one of the major causes of death in the United States, yet most governmental bodies have repeatedly demonstrated an unwillingness to protect the public or, worse than that, act to aggravate a malignant situation through subsidies to tobacco growers.”

The New York Daily News said: “The government’s attitude toward tobacco is a study in hypocrisy. . . . it has provided tobacco price supports since 1938, steadily increasing the amount to the present $65 million, including an allotment of $24 million in loans for shipment of tobacco to underprivileged nations under the Food for Peace program.”

The U.S. government reaps billions of dollars annually from taxes on cigarettes. But thousands of citizens also profit from tobacco. In the United States alone, the smoking habit provides a living for some 450,000 tobacco-farm families and 72,700 workers in the cigarette industry. “If we done away with this tobacco,” exclaimed one grower, “we’d all be on the welfare and the food stamps. The small farmer can’t make it on corn and soybeans.”

Yet adjustments can be made, and people can make a living in other ways. Some years ago all of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were in any way connected with the tobacco business got completely out of it. They could see how inconsistent it was for a Christian to provide a product that, according to medical evidence, “is responsible every year for more deaths than the American battlefield tolls in World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined.”

But some persons may say: ‘A smoker is only hurting himself. Why prohibit a product from which people feel they derive pleasure?’

[Pictures on page 8]

Just as a heroin addict needs heroin to ward off irritability . . . . . . so a smoker needs nicotine for a similar reason

Part 3

Should Smoking Be Prohibited?

“I ENJOY smoking very much. If it should cost a few years off my life, it’s worth it for the pleasure I get.” That’s how one man explained to his grandson why he smoked. Later the man died of cancer.

Yet there are longtime smokers who have survived to 80, or even 90, and enjoy relatively good health. So if a smoker understands the risks, should he be denied what he enjoys?

At the same time, does a smoker bear any responsibility as to how his cigarette habit affects others?

A Moral Responsibility?

It cannot be discounted​—most smokers began smoking when they were young. In the Soviet Union, reports World Health magazine, “82.4 per cent of smokers questioned began to smoke before they were 19 years old.” Another study showed that about one third of regular smokers started smoking before they were nine years of age!

Why do children begin a habit that most of them later say they wish they could quit? Adult example is the primary reason. Children smoke to appear grown-up. They desire to emulate the tough, sophisticated world of the adult. In the Soviet Union four out of five smokers came from families in which an adult smoked. So although a smoker may feel that what he does is purely his own business, his example affects others.

Particularly is this so of the example of medical personnel. They are generally viewed as persons who know whether smoking is really hazardous to health. As a Journal of the American Medical Association editorial observed:

“Every unit of organized medicine should squarely face up to the fact that the images of its members are a prime factor in the behavior of patients. If we smoke or permit smoking at our meetings and in our medical institutions, we are clearly saying, ‘Don’t believe our words, look at what we do.’ Accordingly, medical establishments should eliminate smoking in all of their official functions and should urge individual members to carry these practices to their own offices and the medical institutions with which they are affiliated. After all, if physicians, who have the most knowledge of the disease-producing effects of smoking and who are generally rather disciplined people, refuse to take such action, how can we reasonably expect the average uninformed, relatively undisciplined layman to do better?”

So to back up the medical warnings on the hazards of smoking, you would expect that smoking would be prohibited in hospitals. But of the 7,200 hospitals in the United States, reported Medical World News, only 472 had designated nonsmoking areas, and merely 491 had banned cigarette sales. One hospital that had stopped selling cigarettes even reversed its policy “because business declined when the hospital gift shop eliminated cigarettes.”

What do you think of those who put money and self-interest before the welfare of others? Do you really care how your own example affects others? Sadly, self-interest so often rules. For example, in 1978 the Columbia Journalism Review failed to find, during the previous seven years, a single comprehensive article about the hazards of smoking in any major national magazine that accepted cigarette advertising.

Smoking Is Being Prohibited

Yet the trend is unmistakable. Smoking is being prohibited in more and more places. And when persons smoke in restricted areas they are often asked to extinguish their cigarettes.

Some states in the U.S. have adopted strict antismoking laws. In Minnesota, smoking is prohibited in public places, with “public places” being defined as “any enclosed, indoor area used by the general public.” Utah has imposed similar smoking restrictions, so that, as it is explained, “smokers in Utah are now completely free to smoke only when out of doors or in private homes!”

Also, commercial airplanes in the U.S. are now required by law to provide a seat in a nonsmoking area for every passenger who wants one.

Many smokers resent the increasing number of restrictions on their freedom to smoke. Last December a man, who was asked to put out his cigarette, shot dead the police officer who asked him! Are the prohibitions justified?

Effect on Nonsmokers

Few may be aware of the tremendous damage smoking causes to others, in addition to the smoker. For example, many thousands die every year in smoking-caused fires, 2,000 annually in the U.S. alone! In Canada, more than 40 percent of all fires are directly related to smoking.

Furthermore, cigarette smoke badly pollutes the air. During a football game inside Michigan’s Pontiac Silverdome a sampling of the air revealed that the level of particulates was high enough to cause an air pollution alert if it had occurred outside. Smoking by many of the 80,000 fans was responsible.

The effect of breathing smoke-filled air can be the same as if a person himself smoked. The American Medical News, quoting Dr. Charles F. Tate, said: “There are studies now that show if you sit in a room where smoking is going on, depending on the number of people smoking in the room and the size of the room, the non-smoker will be smoking the equivalent of a pack a day.” And breathing the smoke from an idling cigarette is actually more harmful, since it contains almost twice as much tar and nicotine as smoke that is inhaled while a person is puffing a cigarette.

For some time it has been recognized that nonsmoking adults with heart and lung diseases, as well as young children, suffer damage from cigarette fumes. Recently a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that healthy, adult nonsmokers also suffer adverse effects. “Now, for the first time, we have a quantitative measurement of a physical change,” write Dr. Claude Lenfant and Barbara Liu in an accompanying editorial in the aforementioned journal.

Especially is it dangerous to an unborn child for a pregnant woman to smoke. Smoking constricts the blood vessels and arteries in the uterus, depriving the unborn baby of necessary oxygen and nutrients. Also, poisonous carbon monoxide passes through the placenta, reaching the baby. “It is quite clear,” Dr. Mary B. Meyer of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health says, “that smoking increases the risk of abortion, stillbirth and pre-term delivery.”

Considering the harm done to the smoker, as well as to those who may be forced to breathe his smoke, can’t you see good reason to prohibit smoking? Jehovah’s Witnesses have long shown that smoking is incompatible with Bible principles. “Let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of flesh and spirit,” God’s Word says. (2 Cor. 7:1) Clearly, smoking defiles and often sickens the smoker, as well as those near him. How, then, can a person smoke and love others who desire to remain undefiled by the smoke?​—Matt. 22:39.

When God’s kingdom has destroyed the loveless old system of things, there will no longer be any tobacco smokers. Smoking certainly is not here to stay. So if you want to remain to enjoy the blessings of God’s new order​—and you happen to be a tobacco smoker—​you must get rid of this defiling habit. And if you really want to, you can do it!

[Picture on page 10]

Adult example is the primary reason why children begin to smoke

[Pictures on page 11]

Smoking is being prohibited in more and more places

Breathing the smoke from an idling cigarette is more harmful than inhaling smoke while puffing a cigarette

[Pictures on page 12]

Smoking increases the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth

Can a person live by Bible principles and smoke?

Part 4

You Can Break Free!

“THE easiest thing I ever did.” That’s how Mark Twain, the famous writer, described giving up smoking. “I ought to know,” he added, “I’ve done it a thousand times.”

Yes, the real challenge is not in stopping, it’s in not starting again. Millions of smokers quit​—perhaps for a day, or even a week or several months—​but then they start again. Overcoming physical dependence on nicotine often is not the hardest battle​—it’s resisting the strong craving for another cigarette.

Yet, if you really want to, you can break free from the tobacco habit. The proof? A whole society of people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, are tobacco free. But, as members of the general population, they were not always that way.

In many countries a third or more of adults smoke. That would indicate that about one third of the more than 2,000,000 Witnesses once smoked. How did these hundreds of thousands of persons break free from smoking when they became Witnesses?

Knowledge and a Decision

It is as Dr. Charles F. Tate explained in American Medical News: “The decision has to be made deep inside. Once this decision is made, the biggest part of the battle is over.” In other words, you really have to want to quit. What can provide this determination?

Knowledge can. But what knowledge? Well, for many it is knowledge that smoking can kill. “Patient after patient comes in to see the result of an x-ray,” Dr. Tate said. “I show them an x-ray with a tumor. They ask if it’s cancer. I have to confirm their suspicion and they never want to see another cigaret again.”

On becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, it is not simply the knowledge that smoking can kill that causes persons to quit. Rather, it is knowledge about Jehovah God​—that, as the Bible says, “it is he that has made us.” (Ps. 100:3) Knowing that to defile their bodies is not pleasing to the One who created them, the Witnesses refrain from smoking.​—2 Cor. 7:1.

Also vital to their firm decision not to smoke is the knowledge that it harms others. Not only do children pick up this deadly habit from older ones, but the smoke itself can contribute to the early death of others. Knowledge of these things makes it impossible for a true Christian to smoke. So in obedience to God’s law, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” all smokers who become Jehovah’s Witnesses stop smoking.​—Matt. 22:39.

This is not to say that quitting is always easy for those who become Witnesses. It is pure agony for some​—the hardest thing in life they have ever done. But they have stopped, with help. And so can you.

Help That Is Needed

“Anti-smoking remedies,” says New Scientist, “are rapidly becoming as potentially profitable a venture as slimming aids.” Yet, after a review of the various therapies and programs, this journal concludes: “Without exception, the aids currently on the market offer little in the way of real help to the smoker.” Antismoking chemical preparations evidently have limited, if any, value.

The particular benefit of antismoking aids or programs is to provide support, something to give persons confidence, a system to believe in. Many smokers fail to quit because they are not convinced they really can. So what they need is help to believe they can succeed. Sympathetic friends are invaluable, especially those who themselves have quit and thus can reaffirm that it is possible. Smokers who have become Jehovah’s Witnesses received this kind of help to quit.

But what is especially needed to stop smoking is God’s help. The apostle Paul truthfully said: “For all things I have strength by virtue of him who imparts power to me.” (Phil. 4:13) A three-to-four-pack-a-day smoker​—a Brooklyn, New York, housewife—​told how she was able to keep her decision to quit smoking:

“My hands shook. I cried almost constantly. I was sick; the craving was agonizing. But I had made up my mind, and with Jehovah’s help I stuck to it. I am now convinced that persons who do not succeed just do not really desire to give it up. They still love smoking more than they love Jehovah.”

Here is a key to breaking free​—it is a genuine desire to please God. Smoking can bring pleasure, as can marijuana use, promiscuous sex and other illicit behavior. So as one smoker, who had a hard time quitting, said: “Eventually I acknowledged in prayer to Jehovah that I really did enjoy smoking, but that I wanted to give it up to please him. . . . I finally broke free from the habit.”

You, too, can break free. If your desire is to please God, write the publishers of Awake! and they will be happy to send to your home, free of charge, a qualified minister who will provide you with Scriptural information and the kind of moral support that has helped so many to stop smoking.

[Picture on page 13]

Millions of persons have broken free from smoking