How the World Got Hooked

THE American senator smokes two packs of cigarettes daily. “I know it is going to shorten my life . . . It will probably kill me,” he told his colleagues in a debate over price supports for tobacco farmers. “I despair the day I ever got addicted to this horrible mess.”

The senator is not alone in his regrets. By some estimates, 90 percent of his country’s smokers either have tried to quit or want to quit. And in 1983 alone, two million Japanese smokers did stop. Says one authority: “Almost all habitual smokers appear to be sorry they ever took to tobacco, and warn their offspring not to follow their examples.”

But how did all these regretful smokers get so deeply involved? Somehow, as researcher Robert Sobel puts it regarding this world, “for whatever good or evil it may bring, we are wedded as a civilization to those paper tubes containing small amounts of granulated weed.” One of the six giants of the cigarette industry has a quarter of a million employees. Each year its sales in 78 countries on six continents total $10 billion (U.S.). How could such a widely unwanted habit create the demand requiring the huge industry that supplies the habit?

Actually, the cigarette story may be one of the biggest surprises of the last hundred years. Sparking the incredible demand of this so-called cigarette century were two 19th-century wars. A newborn industry, advertising, fanned the embers. And a surprising new tobacco​—bright yellow, milder, and chemically different—​emboldened smokers to inhale its smoke. That noteworthy change in smoking habits, oral inhaling, ensured that most smokers would remain hooked the rest of their lives.

The Wars That Kindled a Demand

Tobacco remained an extravagant luxury until 1856, when cigarettes found their first mass market. That is when British and French soldiers returned from the Crimean War with “paper cigars” and a habit they had learned there. A cigarette fad swept across Europe, creating an unexpected demand for Turkish cigarettes or their English imitations.

The “Crimea fad” established the cigarette as a cheap wartime substitute for pipe or cigar. But the fad died. Furthermore, as Robert Sobel points out, “in the early 1860s, there appeared to be no way that middle-class American men​—the prime market for smokes—​would take to cigarettes.” Smoke from these early cigarettes was not as seductive as that of the modern cigarette. Like cigar smoke, it was slightly alkaline, and smokers held it in their mouths. There was no comfortable way to inhale as cigarette smokers usually do today. It was time for the next surprise development.

The American Civil War (1861-65) introduced a more addictive smoke, doing so with what tobacco expert Jerome E. Brooks calls “explosive force.” Once more, war brought the inexpensive cigarette to soldiers​—first Confederate, then Union. But this time it was no passing fad.

These cigarettes used American tobacco, and something about them was different. American growers had adopted new strains of tobacco that grew well in their nitrogen-poor soil. They also discovered, by a freak accident on a North Carolina farm, a curing process that turned their leaf bright yellow, mild, and sweet. In 1860 the U.S. Census Bureau called it “one of the most abnormal developments in agriculture that the world has ever known.” After a few cigarettes of this novel tobacco, new smokers felt a compelling urge to light up again.

Hooked!

Not understood at the time, this small but relentlessly growing market had become physically dependent, hooked, on a highly addictive substance. “The casual smoking of more than two or three cigarettes during adolescence” almost invariably leads to “regular dependent smoking,” says addiction researcher Dr. Michael A. H. Russell. “Unlike the adolescent who shoots heroin once or twice a week at first, an adolescent smoker experiences some two hundred successive nicotine ‘fixes’ by the time he has finished his first pack of cigarettes.”

Yes, inhaling was the secret. Nicotine, it seems, will penetrate and irritate mucous membranes only under alkaline conditions. Because cigarette smoke is slightly acid, it is the only tobacco smoke mild enough in mouth and throat for routine inhaling. But in the lungs the acid neutralizes, and nicotine dumps freely into the bloodstream. In just seven seconds the nicotine-rich blood arrives at the brain, so that each puff yields an almost instant nicotine reward. Youths who smoke more than one cigarette, reports a British government study, stand only a 15-percent chance to remain nonsmokers.

Thus, in the same decade as the Crimean War, the cigarette industry had spawned a powerful new habit. Within 20 years tobacco merchants hit on the idea of using catchy newspaper ads and testimonials to attract new customers. A machine patented in 1880 mass-produced the cigarette and kept the price low, while pictures of sports heroes and smiling ladies sold the cigarette image to the male public. But what kept them coming back for more? Nicotine dependency! As health writer William Bennet, M.D., puts it: “Mechanization, clever advertising and marketing techniques made their contribution, but [without nicotine] they never would have sold much dried cabbage.”

By 1900 the modern cigarette, already international, was ready to tighten its grip on world society.

[Blurb on page 5]

A new smoker experiences 200 nicotine “fixes” from just his first pack of cigarettes

The Sacred Leaf That Caught On

For three centuries tobacco was medicine to Europeans. Doctors prescribed the herb for ailments from halitosis to corns. It all started in 1492 when Columbus and his crew, the first Europeans to see tobacco, found West Indies islanders smoking crude cigars in tribal ceremonies.

Long before Columbus, nearly all the early peoples of the Americas held tobacco sacred. Originally, smoking was a right and function of witch doctors and priests. They used its narcotic effect to induce visions during solemn tribal rites. “Tobacco was intimately associated with their gods,” reports historian W. F. Axton, “not only in their religious observances but also in their curative or healing procedures, all of which were connected in one way or another with their religion.” But if tobacco’s medicinal use is what first caught the eye of Spanish and Portuguese explorers, its use for pleasure soon followed.

“I’ll have another cigarette/​And curse Sir Walter Raleigh,” sang Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Sir Walter, called the “best-known propagandist among Englishmen for the recreative pipe,” grew tobacco on his estate in Ireland. He did his best to popularize the habit among fashionable society. Ahead of his time, he brings to mind the tobacco industrialist and advertising man of the ‘cigarette century.’

But it was the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, not Sir Walter’s charm, that made the 17th century the “Great Age of the Pipe,” says Jerome E. Brooks. “Chiefly through the agency of war,” he maintains, “smoking spread across the Continent” and into Asia and Africa. A similar development was to kick off the era of the cigarette.

The Habit Buries the Opposition

LIKE a reluctant smoker who will not quit, the cigarette market has at times cut down on its consumption for fear that smoking might be harmful and addictive, only to return more committed than ever. What mechanisms suppress such fears? Advertising and war! These have been “the two most important methods of spreading cigarette use,” according to historian Robert Sobel.

Cigarette use shot upward with the rise of ‘nation against nation’ in the first world war. (Matthew 24:7) What caused American production to go from 18 billion cigarettes in 1914 to 47 billion by 1918? A crusade for free cigarettes for soldiers! The narcotic effect was deemed helpful to combat loneliness at the front.

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag/​While you’ve a lucifer [match] to light your fag [cigarette],” urged the British wartime song. As government agencies and patriotic private groups provided free smokes for fighting men, not even anticigarette protesters dared criticize.

Tightening the Grip

Newly converted smokers became good customers after the war. In 1925 alone, Americans consumed an average of nearly 700 cigarettes per person. Postwar Greece consumed half again as many per capita as the United States. American cigarettes became popular in many countries, but others like India, China, Japan, Italy, and Poland depended on homegrown tobacco to meet their domestic demand.

To increase their grip on the American market, advertisers aimed at the ladies. “Tobacco advertising in the late 1920’s was characterized as ‘gone mad,’” reports Jerome E. Brooks. But advertising kept Americans buying cigarettes during and after the economic depression of 1929. Huge budgets (about $75,000,000 in 1931) promoted the cigarette as an aid to remaining slim, an alternative to candy. Movies glorifying cigarette-smoking stars, such as Marlene Dietrich, helped create a sophisticated image. Thus in 1939, on the eve of a new world war, American women joined men in consuming 180 billion cigarettes.

Another war! Soldiers again got free cigarettes, even in their field rations. “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War!” ran a well-promoted ad, capitalizing on the patriotic wartime mood. With cigarette consumption in the United States estimated at 400 billion yearly by the end of World War II, who could question the place of tobacco in the world?

Indeed, who could question the importance of cigarettes to postwar Europe, where at one point cartons of cigarettes replaced currency in the black market? American soldiers stationed in Europe bought subsidized cigarettes for as little as five cents a pack and with them paid for everything​—from new shoes to girlfriends. Tax-free military sales of cigarettes shot up from 5,400 per capita in 1945 to 21,250 in just two years.

For decades any objectionable aspects of tobacco use were successfully kept out of the public limelight​—not refuted but simply overshadowed by the relentless growth of a popular habit. Privately, however, questions remained: Is smoking harmful? Is it clean or is it contaminating?

In 1952 the smoldering question of health suddenly surfaced. British doctors published a new study showing that cancer victims tended to be heavy smokers. The Reader’s Digest picked up the story, and wide publicity followed. By 1953 an anticigarette campaign seemed headed for success. Would the world kick the habit?

The Formidable Cigarette Industry

Publicly, the cigarette industry insisted that the case against cigarettes was unproved, merely statistical. But suddenly​—and ironically—​it revealed its secret weapon, the low-tar cigarette. The new product furnished an image of safety and health to frightened smokers who didn’t want to quit, while advertising again proved its ability to sell an image.

Actually, the low-tar brands were more soothing to the conscience of the smoker than to his health. Scientists were later to find that many smokers compensated by inhaling more deeply and by holding the smoke in the lungs longer until they got as much nicotine as ever. But another quarter century would pass before researchers could demonstrate this. Meanwhile, cigarettes emerged as one of the world’s most profitable industries, now chalking up annual sales worth over $40 billion (U.S.).

Economically the industry today is stronger than ever. Customers keep buying. Yearly consumption is rising by 1 percent annually in the industrialized countries and by over 3 percent in the developing countries of the Third World. In Pakistan and Brazil, the growth is respectively six and eight times faster than in most Western countries. One fifth of Thailand’s individual income is used to buy cigarettes.

Still, for many thoughtful individuals the tight grip of the world’s 100-year cigarette love affair is by no means the end of the story. Could there be more than meets the eye in this phenomenal increase in tobacco use, especially since 1914, and its almost blind acceptance by so many? What about those questions seldom addressed, such as the ethics of the habit? Is smoking morally neutral or is it blameworthy? Our next article presents some insight.

[Picture on page 7]

Advertising and war​—the two most important methods of spreading cigarette use

Facing the Facts: Tobacco Today

SURPRISED that a demand for cigarettes ever developed, an editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter asks: “Why did a waning vice, subject [in the 1870’s] to a good deal of mid-Victorian opprobrium, suddenly reestablish itself?” Yes, as a recent ad boasts to lady smokers, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Historians credit addiction, advertising, and wars with winning public acceptance of tobacco. “After addiction, advertising is the industry’s most powerful ally in its battle for the hearts and minds of the smoker,” reports a recent investigator. True, but is there more to the story?

The Story Behind the Story

For Bible students the significance of the cigarette era cannot be lightly dismissed. Why not? Because the era​—especially since 1914—​has fulfilled prophecy. First, in 1914 ‘nation rose against nation’ in world war. Then, as Jesus Christ further foretold, human society was disrupted by ‘increasing lawlessness.’ As war disillusioned people and shattered their Victorian values, it paved the way for this unprecedented acceptance of the cigarette.​—Matthew 24:7, 12.

In 1914 the world entered an age of anxiety, and the cigarette industry prospered. Many smokers turned to the habit to combat the tensions of what the Bible calls “critical times hard to deal with.” Advertising’s allure and nicotine dependency helped to make self-indulgence the new mood of society. Accurately, the Bible foretold that people in the last days would be “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God.”​—2 Timothy 3:1-5.

All of this should help us sense the urgency of our times. Rather than ‘taking no note,’ as Jesus said some humans have done in a time of crisis, we can learn our lesson from history. The Bible encourages us to hope in God’s Kingdom, not in futile campaigns to reform the world​—nor in vain dreams that the nations someday will kick their bad habits.​—Matthew 24:14, 39.

Can the World Kick the Habit?

The prospects do not look hopeful for the world to kick its tobacco habit. In 1962 the British Royal College of Physicians first warned against smoking, but 1981 found Britons buying 110 billion cigarettes. The surgeon general of the United States first warned about the health hazards in 1964. But the next year saw record sales. By 1980 Americans were buying 135 billion more cigarettes yearly than in 1964, in spite of the surgeon general’s warning of health risk that appears on every pack! The fact is, the world now buys four trillion cigarettes a year.

Whether you personally smoke or not, the money in the tobacco business these days should tell you that governments and politicians are not likely to end the tobacco trade. In the United States, for example, although 350,000 people die each year due to cigarette smoking, tobacco furnishes $21 billion in taxes. It also supplies jobs, directly or indirectly, for two million people. And tobacco companies are big spenders. Worldwide, they spend $2 billion (U.S.) a year on advertising​—dwarfing the combined $7 million that the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association spend on antismoking education.

Or consider two agencies of the United Nations and their embarrassing split over tobacco policy: WHO (World Health Organization) recently announced that stopping the “smoking epidemic” in Third World nations “could do more to improve health and prolong life . . . than any other single action in the whole field of preventative medicine.” But the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) holds that “tobacco growing generates large-scale rural employment” in the Third World. The FAO describes tobacco as “a very important and easily tapped source of tax revenue” providing “strong incentives” for farmers “to produce tobacco” and governments “to encourage its cultivation and manufacture.”

Facing the Facts

Yes, the cigarette phenomenon, especially since 1914, calls for facing some hard facts. Some say, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ But the facts linking smoking with lung and heart disease dismiss such a shortsighted view. In England, cigarette smoking is said to kill eight times as many people as die in auto accidents. Worldwide, the habit “has wiped out more people than all the wars of this century,” says a report in the Manchester Guardian Weekly.

What about addiction? The hard fact is that nicotine creates a state of drug dependency. And many thinking people feel they cannot afford to ignore the moral and spiritual damage associated with it.

Moral Objections

Christians find the moral and Scriptural objections to tobacco use to be of even more weight than medical or health warnings. Tobacco use originated with animism, spiritism, and worship of man-made gods​—all condemned in the Bible as degrading practices that lead one away from the Creator. (See box, “The Sacred Leaf That Caught On,” page 4.) (Romans 1:23-25) Smoking is unclean, dangerous, and contrary to Christian standards. (2 Corinthians 7:1) More importantly, addictiveness brings the habit within the scope of “druggery”​—a condemnatory term used in the Bible for spiritually damaging and superstitious practices.​—See the Reference Bible footnote on Revelation 21:8; 22:15.

Thus, there are serious moral implications in a habit that pleases one’s senses at the expense of one’s health, pollutes the air that one’s neighbor must breathe, and influences impressionable youths to begin doing the same. After some thought and perhaps painful reevaluation, many smokers decide they must quit​—for their own sakes and for their loved ones.

Reversing the Process

To break with tobacco addiction, you face pressure from your own body and from your surroundings. As a smoker, your body is dependent on nicotine. You feel the same craving that a century of smokers have felt since cigarette smoke became inhalable. Billboards and magazines dangle the habit before your mind’s eye, always associating it with pleasure, freedom, adventure, beauty, luxury. Your fellow smokers tend to view smoking as normal, safe, innocent, pleasurable, stylish, sophisticated. You have made room for the idea of smoking.

In short, for you to kick the habit, you personally must reverse the process that hooked the world. Practical suggestions like those found on this page can help you buck the world’s trend, but the first step is crucial: Know why you want to quit. “The decision has to be made deep inside,” says Dr. C. F. Tate in American Medical News. “Once this decision is made, the biggest part of the battle is over.”

And what of the world that seems unable and unwilling to make the changes that you personally can make? No, human society is not likely to end by its own efforts self-destructive practices such as its love affair with the cigarette. But be assured that God promises to “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Revelation 11:18) And God’s means for bringing this about​—his heavenly Kingdom government—​is your solid hope for one day seeing spiritual, moral, and physical health restored everywhere on this earth.​—Isaiah 33:24.

[Graph/​Picture on page 9]

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Cigarette advertising’s $2 billion annual budget dwarfs the $7 million budget of antismoking education

Antismoking Education

7 Million

Cigarette Advertising

2 Billion

(each square equals one million dollars)

How to Break the Habit

DON’T try to taper off: It prolongs the agony of withdrawal.

DON’T waste your money on expensive antismoking remedies: “Without exception, the aids currently on the market offer little in the way of real help to the smoker,” reports New Scientist. And World Health says: “The major element in success . . . will always be the smoker’s willpower. The rest is just trimming.”

DO accept your responsibility, but accept help too: Supportive friends who themselves have quit smoking are priceless. Pray. A sincere desire to please God and do his will works wonders.​—Philippians 2:4; 4:6, 13.

DO recognize the benefits of not smoking: Reducing your risk of death (from heart disease, stroke, bronchitis, emphysema, or cancer); setting a good example; saving money; getting free from the mess, smell, inconvenience, and slavery of the habit.

DO understand your withdrawal pangs: Within 12 hours of your last cigarette, your heart and lungs begin to repair themselves. Your carbon monoxide and nicotine levels drop fast. But as your body heals, it hurts. You may feel irritable or short-tempered, but you do not need a cigarette to steady your nerves. This temporary discomfort is the start of a healthier life.

DO understand the challenge: Anticipate problems. Avoid self-pity and compromise. But have no doubt, you can kick the habit.