What Smoking Does to the Smoker

The ad image is clean and cool. A sparkling mountain lake is pictured with a pack of cigarettes pointed straight at you, the reader. This type of advertising is quite effective. It associates smoking with pleasant sensations. Each year billions of dollars are spent trying to link smoking with the desirable things in life. But what is behind the image?

FACTS ABOUT SMOKING

In 1979, the Canadian Lung Association sobered many when it flatly stated: “Each year 50,000 Canadians die prematurely from the effects of smoking. Many more live on with crippled lungs and overstrained hearts.”

In 1979, the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Julius B. Richmond, issued a massive report citing “overwhelming proof” that smoking is dangerous to health. The report estimated that, every year, smoking kills about 350,000 Americans. Also, Britain’s undersecretary of state for health, Sir George Young, recently said that each year smoking causes 50,000 deaths in Britain.

How are these great numbers of deaths calculated? Basically, it is by comparing the death rates of smokers and nonsmokers. Of a comprehensive study involving over a million persons, the Encyclopedia Americana commented: “For every 100 deaths of nonsmokers during a period of observation, 168 deaths occurred among a similar and comparable group of cigarette smokers; that is, there were 68 excess deaths.”

But is such evidence conclusive? Yes, it is. “There is no controversy about the facts,” observes the Canadian Lung Association. “Thousands of careful studies have documented them. No major medical or health agency questions them.” Science 80, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, concurs: “The evidence that cigarettes shorten life is overwhelming; the causal connection is as firmly established as any in medicine.”

Conclusive studies have been made possible by the great number of persons who have smoked most of their lives. “In retrospect,” notes John Cairns, a molecular biologist and expert on cancer, “it is almost as if Western societies had set out to conduct a vast and fairly well controlled experiment in carcinogenesis [the production of cancer], bringing about several million deaths and using their own people as the experimental animals.”

Yes, millions of lives​—many, many millions—​have been cut short by smoking. “Medical studies,” explains The World Book Encyclopedia, “show that the average life expectancy of a smoker is three to four years less than that of a nonsmoker. The life expectancy of a heavy smoker​—a person who smokes two or more packages of cigarettes a day—​may be as much as eight years shorter than that of a nonsmoker.”

In efforts to minimize the dangers, so-called “safer” cigarettes are now marketed. But are they really safe? How is it that smoking harms the smoker?

A SAFE CIGARETTE?

The nicotine and particulate matter of cigarette smoke​—loosely called tar—​are apparently the principal disease-causing agents. So tar and nicotine have been greatly reduced in cigarette smoke. In fact, the tar has been practically eliminated in some brands, something cigarette ads often emphasize. Low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes have sometimes been heralded as “safe.” A typical front-page headline in the Atlanta Constitution proclaimed: “Pack a Day of Some Cigarets May Be Safe.”

But what are the facts? For one thing, low-tar cigarettes have flavorants added. “If there weren’t any flavorants in any of these low-tar and low-nicotine cigarets, you would taste nothing,” explained Peter Micciche, a chief tobacco chemist. Yet what are these flavorants? They are ‘trade secrets’ known only by the tobacco companies and their flavor suppliers. Yet these chemical flavorants could well be dangerous to health, as one analyst said: “You don’t know if some of these things are worse than tar.”

Also, evidence reveals that, when smoking low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes, smokers smoke more cigarettes and hold the smoke in their lungs longer. They do this to satisfy their craving for nicotine, which is a drug that can be more addictive than heroin. Thus, due to such adjusted smoking habits, smokers may obtain from low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes nearly as much of these harmful substances as from other cigarettes.

Furthermore, the most dangerous component of cigarette smoke may be the carbon monoxide rather than the tar or nicotine. And some low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes have even more carbon monoxide emissions than do standard brands!

Two Danish investigators, Professor Poul Astrup and Dr. Knud Kjeldsen, published their findings regarding the effects of carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke. On the basis of a mass of experimental evidence, they concluded that “carbon monoxide, and not nicotine, is the toxic compound of major importance for the increased risk of smokers to develop atherosclerosis and heart disease.” And it should be noted that most smoking-caused deaths evidently occur due to blood vessel and heart disease, and not cancer.

Common sense should indicate that inhaling cigarette smoke would adversely affect a person’s respiratory tract. And evidence proves that it does. The hairlike cilia inside the bronchial tubes are damaged so that they are unable to move back and forth to sweep out germs and dirt. Also, the smoke reduces the ability of the lungs to clear themselves of inhaled impurities. This means that smokers run a greater risk of disease from harmful airborne substances.

Really, it is dishonest to imply that any cigarette is “safe.” As the top health officer in the United States, Dr. Julius Richmond said: “There is no data anywhere in the large body of scientific evidence on the dangers of smoking that holds out any hope that there is such a thing as a safe cigaret or a safe level of smoking.” Dr. Richmond concluded: ‘The only safe cigarette is an unlit cigarette.”

But even if you are not a smoker, are you safe from the ill effects of other people’s smoke?

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HUMANS THEMSELVES HAVE SERVED AS EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS PROVING THAT SMOKING IS DEADLY

Can the Smoking of Others Hurt You?

Millions of persons suffer serious, and often fatal, harm because someone else smoked. For example, if a mother smokes, her unborn baby is often damaged. In fact, it may be killed even before it can be born.

“How can that be?” you may ask. “How can the smoke hurt the child in the protected environment inside its mother?”

HOW THE UNBORN ARE HURT

Almost immediately after inhaling, nicotine from the smoke enters the smoking mother’s bloodstream. This powerful drug constricts the blood vessels and arteries in her uterus, thus depriving the baby of oxygen and nutrients. At the same time, carbon monoxide easily passes through the placenta to the baby. It replaces some of the vital oxygen in the baby’s blood that is needed for normal growth and development.

Of interest in this regard is a study made by English doctors at Oxford University. They said that when its mother smokes, the baby can “be seen to gasp in the womb, . . . almost certainly suffering a temporary oxygen shortage.”

The sad results are well documented. “Smoking during pregnancy can cause congenital malformations so severe that either the fetus dies, or the infant does shortly after birth,” Family Health magazine observes. Babies born of smoking mothers face a third higher risk of dying soon after birth. And they are twice as likely to be smaller than normal at birth.

In addition, the likelihood of “crib death” (sudden infant death syndrome) is increased when mothers smoke​—by 52 percent researchers say. Apparently babies born to mothers who smoke have subtle abnormalities in their brain stem, and this may interfere with breathing and lead to sudden death.

If smoking by its mother can hurt an unborn baby, how is a child affected by the smoke after it is born?

EFFECT ON YOUNG CHILDREN

Actually, parents who smoke are indirectly forcing their children to smoke. “The effect on young children of parental smoking is estimated at about the same as if the child smoked three to five cigarettes a day,” explained lung specialist Dr. Alfred Munzer. And for the sensitive lungs of a young child, that is a lot of poison! Surely, as a parent, you would be very unhappy to learn that someone was making your child smoke five cigarettes a day!

But are children really hurt by the smoke of smoking parents? The Journal of the American Medical Association summarized the medical research on this question, saying:

“Infants whose mothers smoke are more likely to be admitted to hospitals with bronchitis or pneumonia than are infants whose mothers do not smoke. Another study showed that the chances of pneumonia or bronchitis developing in an infant are almost doubled if both parents smoke. . . . Other studies showed that the frequency of respiratory symptoms in children is directly proportional to the amount of tobacco smoke in the child’s environment. Also, children exposed to tobacco smoke have increases in heart rate and blood pressure that are similar to those changes that occur in smokers.”

A smoker may, for the pleasure he feels he derives from smoking, choose to damage his own health. But do you consider it morally right that he also damages the health of his children?

EFFECT ON ADULTS

What if you are a nonsmoking adult? Are you harmed by the smoke of others?

When you sit near a person who is smoking, the effect can be almost the same as though you were smoking. “Studies have shown,” noted Today’s Health, “that since the average smoker actively smokes his cigarette for only a small portion of the time it is lit, a nonsmoker may actually be forced against his will to breathe almost as much carbon monoxide, tar and nicotine as the active smoker sitting next to him.”

Dr. John L. Pool commented regarding the effect of only a slight increase of carbon monoxide in the air. He said that when carbon monoxide levels are “above eight parts per million (clean air has one to four), there is a definite decrease in oxygen reaching heart and lungs.” How much carbon monoxide may there be in the air of a smoke-filled room?

Philip Abelson, as editor of Science, wrote in an editorial of that magazine: “In a poorly ventilated, smoke-filled room, concentrations of carbon monoxide can easily reach several hundred parts per million, thus exposing smokers and nonsmokers present to a toxic hazard.” Such levels of carbon monoxide are far above the legal limits permitted.

Yet can this smoke really harm you? Indeed it can! Perhaps breathing the smoke makes you feel sick. Smokers should not be surprised by this, since, when smoking for the first time, many of them became sick, even vomiting.

The fact is, for persons with heart disease, breathing the air in a smoke-filled room can be dangerous. “It is a definite health hazard.” That was the conclusion reached from a federal study directed by Dr. Wilbert S. Aronow in California.

A more recent study of 2,100 middle-aged men and women reveals that even healthy adults are harmed when they are forced regularly to breathe the smoke of others. These nonsmokers were found to suffer the same kind of damage to small airways deep inside the lungs as do smokers. “This is permanent damage occurring in people who have chosen not to smoke,” explained physiologist James R. White.

Further emphasizing the danger of being forced to breathe tobacco smoke is a study in Erie County, Pennsylvania. According to the New York Times, this study “revealed that the nonsmoking wives of men who smoke die on the average four years younger than women whose husbands are also nonsmokers.”

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS

The evidence is conclusive: If you are a nonsmoker who must breathe the smoke of others, it can hurt you. As time goes on, this is becoming a generally recognized fact. Thus most states in the United States and hundreds of cities have some kind of ban on smoking in public facilities. Also, some companies restrict smoking to designated areas. And due to losses in productivity from smoking, a number of employers have offered employees bonuses of hundreds of dollars if they will quit.

Many lawsuits have been filed by nonsmokers in an effort to seek relief from the pollution caused by smokers. In one case, the judge noted that smoking had been banned in a certain company’s computer room because the equipment malfunctioned when exposed to cigarette smoke. So he ruled that, if smoking could be curtailed for a machine, it could be also for the sake of humans.

Some smokers now feel harassed because of such legislation against their habit. They consider it unjustified. As one said: “Smoking, after all, is not a sin.”

Yet is this really true, that it is not a sin? Can a person smoke and really please God and love his neighbor?

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POPULAR MAGAZINES PUSH TOBACCO USE

Most popular magazines today encourage tobacco use by filling their pages with advertisements that extol the pleasures of smoking. Rather than being exceptions, major women’s magazines are literally loaded with such advertisements.

Consider just one example, “Redbook” magazine of December 1980. Of its 180 pages, it has a total of 14 pages of cigarette advertisements. There are 11 full-page ads for 11 different brands of cigarettes, two half-page ads for another two brands of cigarettes and one double-page spread advertising yet another brand of cigarettes. But this is not unusual. Other women’s magazines devote similar space to pushing deadly tobacco.

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SMOKING DEPRIVES A DEVELOPING BABY OF OXYGEN AND NUTRIENTS NEEDED FOR NORMAL GROWTH

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SMOKING IS DAMAGING TO PEOPLE AS WELL

Can You Love Your Neighbor and Smoke?

Humans who smoke not only foul the air that others must breathe but also damage their own health. They themselves would be healthier if they stopped smoking. And they would also save a lot of money by not polluting​—up to $700 a year or so just for the cost of the cigarettes. So the only reasonable course for a smoker is to stop smoking.

Consider the amount of pollution in the smoke that curls off the burning end of a cigarette. It is much more toxic than the smoke inhaled by the smoker. Sidestream smoke contains twice the amount of tar and nicotine, five times more carbon monoxide and 50 times more ammonia than mainstream smoke, not to mention other poisons.

The burning of 10 cigarettes in a closed automobile will raise the carbon monoxide level to 100 parts per million, far above the exposure permitted by United States federal air-quality standards. “At a typical campus party,” noted the New York Times, “the level of particulates in the air from cigarette smoke is 40 times above the United States air quality standard.” And, as observed above, the harm done to those regularly forced to breathe such smoke has been well established.

CONSISTENT WITH NEIGHBOR LOVE?

The Bible says that to “love your neighbor as yourself” is “the kingly law,” thus emphasizing this law’s importance. (Jas. 2:8) Would it be showing love to your neighbor willfully to throw garbage onto his property or to spit in his face? “Of course not!” you may say. Would doing these things to your neighbor be a sin?

The definition of sin helps to answer this question. “Sin is a breaking of the law”​—God’s law—​the Bible says. (1 John 3:4, Today’s English Version) So willfully to impose on your neighbor something as objectionable as spit in his face or garbage on his property would be a sin. It would be a violation of “the kingly law” that says, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”

But how does this relate to smoking? Dr. Isaac Asimov, in an editorial in Cancer News, very forcefully showed how. “When someone smokes in my presence,” he said, “his vice is not private. His foul emanations find their way into my lungs and bloodstream. His stench becomes my stench and clings to me. And, he raises my chance of heart disease and lung cancer.”

In answer to smokers who may claim the freedom to smoke in the presence of others, Dr. Asimov said: “If he feels he must smoke and that by objecting I am depriving him of his freedom, then would he be willing to bear with me if I feel I must kick him in the groin and that by objecting he would deprive me of my freedom? Let’s put it this way: Your freedom to smoke ends where my lungs begin.”

No question about it, kicking someone in the groin, spitting in his face, or throwing garbage on his property is not consistent with neighbor love. Neither is smoking. It is infringing on the rights of others​—hurting them rather than loving them. Yes, smoking is a sin.

However, a smoker may explain: “I realize that smoking can be harmful. That’s why I never smoke around people.” So, if one only smokes privately, is it sin? No one else is harmed.

SIN TO SMOKE PRIVATELY?

Yet consider: The smoker’s own life is adversely affected. And who really is the source of our lives? “With you [Jehovah God] is the source of life,” the Bible answers. “He himself gives to all persons life and breath.” (Ps. 36:9; Acts 17:25) Yes, our life is really a marvelous gift from God.

How do we show appreciation for God’s gift of life? By doing what can ruin it? Of course not! Willfully doing so obviously would be wrong. In such a context, examine the statement of Joseph Califano, former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: “Today there can be no doubt that smoking is truly slow-motion suicide.”

Deliberately destroying human life is wrong​—it is a sin. The Bible commands Christians not even to pollute their bodies. “Let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of flesh,” it urges. (2 Cor. 7:1) For a smoker to obey this command, he must rid himself of the tobacco habit, since it is indeed defiling. It defiles the smoker’s fingers, teeth, breath, clothes​—practically everything with which it comes in contact.

But what if a smoker wants to quit, yet is so addicted that he cannot? Will God mercifully understand that, since Jesus Christ said, ‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’?​—Matt. 26:41.

EXCUSED DUE TO WEAKNESS?

No question about it, to quit smoking can be extremely difficult. “It was much easier to quit heroin than cigarettes,” addicts have said. The withdrawal symptoms last much longer with tobacco. “For most, craving persists at least a month,” observes the magazine Science 80, “and for about a fifth it continues five to nine years after they quit.”

This helps explain why many quit smoking for a while, but then start again. Nine out of 10 smokers want to stop. But to stay off tobacco is a continual day-in, day-out battle, sometimes lasting for years. Millions have won the battle. Tens of millions have fought and lost. If a person has tried to quit and has failed, is it wise to assume that God will understand and forgive this shortcoming?

A source of the problem is that a person may enjoy smoking. Yet that does not excuse the practice when God condemns it. The Bible says that, “rather than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin,” Moses wisely chose to serve God. (Heb. 11:24-26) God expects his servants to fight against and, with his help, overcome practices that are contrary to his laws.

Consider fornication as an example. It is a practice that may seem enjoyable for a time. And when practiced, a person’s craving for sex with a variety of partners can be as strong as any urge for a cigarette. Yet fornication is breaking God’s law, and willful, unrepentant practicers of fornication will not be favored with God’s gift of everlasting life. Neither will those who continue to smoke.​—Heb. 13:4; Rom. 6:23.

It takes real effort to be obedient to God’s laws. This was also true for God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He underwent the most extreme suffering, eventually dying a horrible death. Yet he remained faithful to God. For some persons, the agonies experienced in order to quit smoking may seem just as difficult to endure as the sufferings Christ underwent. Yet the tobacco habit can be overcome. How?

How to Stop Smoking

First of all, a smoker must really want to stop. He needs strong motivation. Jacquelyn Rogers, the founder of Smokenders, an organization to help smokers to quit, says that she is in the motivation business. “We make people believe they can stop,” she says. Many smokers fail to quit because of doubt​—they doubt their ability to succeed.

Can the various antismoking programs and chemical preparations aid in quitting? Evidently they have helped some. “I couldn’t have stopped without help,” said one heavy smoker. But as Dr. Neil Solomon, who gave this smoker injections of vitamins, minerals and novocaine, acknowledged regarding the treatment: “There’s nothing magical about it. If you don’t want to stop, it won’t work.”

THE WILL TO STOP

Yes, success depends almost wholly on the smoker’s determination and will to stop. Without this determination, no antismoking remedy will succeed. But with it, a person can quit without paying for some expensive antismoking remedy. Ninety percent of ex-smokers quit without any of such aids. As World Health magazine said: “The major element in success or failure is and will always be the smoker’s willpower. The rest is just trimming.” But how can a person obtain the will to stop?

For many, constantly reminding themselves that smoking is deadly has provided them the will. As a south Miami physician, who admits she liked to smoke, said: “Fear is the only reason I don’t smoke.” Some antismoking programs cultivate this fear, emphasizing the terrible damage smoking does to the body. Psychologist David M. Fineman described the process of negative imagery that helped him, as well as others, to quit: “I used to inhale a cigarette and picture the instant damage it was doing to my body. I consciously tried to summon up these images.”

Such an approach, however, does not provide sufficient motivation for some to stop. As a New York housewife explained: “If I had gone to a doctor and he told me that I would die from cancer unless I gave up smoking I would not have quit. Smoking was the main thing in my life, more important to me than food. I smoked almost constantly. I would even walk around the house with an ashtray in my hand.” What stronger motivation can help severely addicted smokers to quit?

This New York housewife started to study the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Yet learning that smoking was against God’s law did not, in itself, provide her sufficient determination to stop. “I wanted to stop,” she said, “but I was so addicted. I just did not have the strength to do so.”

She explained what eventually made her determined to stop. “My husband accepted the Bible truths he was learning, quit smoking and was baptized. I was so grateful! I did not want to do anything to hinder our serving Jehovah God acceptably and gaining life in his new system of things, so I determined to stop also.” And she did!

AIDS IN QUITTING

There are aids available to bolster your will to quit. Most important is the aid that God can give. The New York housewife mentioned earlier explained: “I prayed to Jehovah incessantly and with his help held to my resolve never to smoke again.” Yet some pray but still cannot stop. What is the problem?

It could be the timing of their prayers. One smoker prayed in the morning and at night for strength, and, after weakening and taking a smoke, he would pray to Jehovah in order to tell Him that he was sorry for what he had done. A Christian friend asked him: “Isn’t the time that you really need God’s help the moment that you are reaching for a smoke?” When the man began praying at that moment, he gained the help to stop smoking!

Supportive friends, especially ones who themselves have conquered the smoking habit and can therefore affirm that it can be done, are valuable aids. So seek out such friends. Let them know of your decision to stop smoking, and ask for their support.

What is the best way to stop? Is it by reducing the number of cigarettes consumed each day, thereby gradually quitting? Or is it by setting a day and stopping abruptly on that day?

Contrary to what many think, a comprehensive study of ex-smokers showed that smokers are better able to overcome withdrawal symptoms by stopping suddenly. Researchers Saul M. Shiffman and Murray E. Jarvik of the University of California at Los Angeles explain that cutting down slowly may actually “prolong their [the smokers’] agony by intermittently reinforcing their symptoms and smoking behavior. Typically, this chronic state of withdrawal will lead to relapse and return to baseline rates of smoking.”

The first few days after quitting may be the most difficult. So, as an aid, think about the benefits of not smoking. One is the money saved. It can amount to quite a lot! “I’ve now been putting $2 a day into a coffee can​—the money I would have previously spent on cigarets,” wrote one man. “I figure in the next 12 months it should add up to more than $700, enough to buy my wife a fur coat or something.”

With strong determination, many smokers have quit for a week or so, enduring the initial agony of withdrawal. But, as World Health observes, “a difficult phase begins, usually starting between the first and the third week. The first backslidings occur then.” So the battle needs to continue!

Whenever you feel a need for a cigarette, breathe deeply two or three times. Keep oral substitutes handy. Pop into your mouth things like raisins, nuts and sunflower seeds, or eat carrot and celery sticks, or chew gum. Drink more fluids​—wholesome drinks such as fruit or vegetable juices or just plain water. Also, arrange for a more balanced diet.

Getting more exercise can be a real aid. Perhaps try activities such as jogging, tennis, cycling or swimming. Stretch a lot. Get plenty of rest. Go to bed early so as to avoid nervous fatigue. Concentrate on learning to relax. If you really want to, you can stop smoking!

WHY STOPPING IS WORTH THE EFFORT

The benefits from stopping are many. They include improved health and longer life prospects, but there are many more. One ex-smoker noted: “I have discovered again all the natural and simple pleasures that exist, that of taste, for instance. Walking in the woods, I realize the odours no longer smell all the same​—there’s a whole variety of them; it’s like entering a brand new environment.”

The greatest benefit, however, is in the realization that by quitting you are ridding yourself of a habit that displeases God, as well as many of your neighbors. If you want help to stop smoking because you desire the favor of Jehovah God, write to the publishers of The Watchtower. They will be pleased to send to your home a qualified minister who will be happy to provide you with further Scriptural information and moral support to help you to quit.

Health Dangers of Tobacco Suppressed

In a letter published in “The Journal of the American Medical Association,” Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan wrote: “Because they are so dependent on the income from cigarette advertisements, many popular magazines downplay the impact tobacco has on health. Having reviewed a number of major women’s magazines, I have not found one important story on tobacco and health.”

Dr. Whelan explained that she was asked to write an article entitled “Protect Your Man From Cancer” for a widely read women’s beauty and fashion magazine. “I was paid in full for the piece,” she notes, “but the editor frankly explained to me that they could use only a small part of it because of my frequent mention of tobacco and the fact that they ran three full-page cigarette ads each month. On other occasions, I have been told up front by the editor of a publication, ‘no columns or stories on tobacco.’”​—November 7, 1980, page 2045.