One Chance in TEN
The American Cancer Society says, "If you are a nonsmoker — your chances of getting lung cancer are only four in a thousand." But, says Dr. Harold Shyrock, "Continuing to smoke is like playing Russian roulette. The confirmed heavy smoker's chances of dying from lung cancer are ONE IN TEN."
Is it worth it?
Every day in the United States there are 375 deaths from heart and circulatory diseases, 175 deaths from lung cancer, and 250 deaths from other cigarette-related diseases! More than 800 die daily because of cigarette smoking.
None of these diseases is pleasant. Cancer can be excruciatingly painful, horrible. Chronic bronchitis can be sheer torture. Buerger's disease (where the small arteries of the fingers and toes are obstructed) occurs almost exclusively in men who smoke. In its final stages, it can end in gangrene and force amputation of the affected part.
Count the cost. Add it all up. It's not worth it!
Therefore, if you don't smoke — DON'T START!!!
If you do smoke — QUIT NOW, before it is too late!
WHY Do People Smoke?
About 70 million people in the United States smoke, in one form or another. An estimated two million teenagers join the ranks of the smokers every year.
There are an estimated five million who smoke two packs a day — about four percent of the adult population.
"I advise you to switch to Folly Cigarettes.
For only 100,000 coupons you get a new set of lungs."
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When do people start smoking?
Actual data suggests that few children begin smoking before age 12 — less than five percent of the boys and one percent of the girls, probably. From age 12, however, smoking gradually increases.
At the 12th-grade level, between 40 and 55 percent of children have been found to be smokers. By age 25, estimates run as high as 60 percent of men and 36 percent of women (Smoking and Health, page 362).
Dr. Horn estimates that 10 percent of later smokers begin to become regular smokers before their teens, and 65 percent during their high school years.
Is it any wonder, then, that many cigarette commercials seem to feature youth, vitality, excitement, fun, and those things which are attractive to young people in particular?
A survey of 16,486 grade-school youngsters showed that more than one in five smoked cigarettes — and that many start smoking at the tender age of eight!
The survey, conducted by the Medical Society of Atlantic County, found that 24 percent of the boys and 21 percent of the girls were smokers, in grade school. Among third graders, boys smoking outnumbered girls five to one.
Similarly, the chairman of the California inter-agency council on cigarette smoking and health revealed that TEN PERCENT of all fifth and sixth grade students in California smoke cigarettes (UPI, Jan. 13, 1968). Dr. Paul R. Baker said, "Children tend to idolize their parents and imitate them." He placed most of the blame on parents who allow their children to smoke.
A survey in Fort Wayne, Indiana, showed that almost one of every ten pupils in the sixth through ninth grades smoked. The survey covered 12,000 students (UPI, Mar. 29, 1966).
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Nationwide, every day of the year 4,500 youngsters 12-17 years of age take up smoking, an official of the Health, Education, and Welfare Department disclosed.
Statistics indicate that one boy in five in the United States begins smoking by the ninth grade, and by the senior year of high school 44 percent of the boys smoke. Overall, ONE THIRD of the young people in high school are regular cigarette smokers!
Why?
Dr. Daniel Horn answers, "Children's smoking is largely dependent on parental example." In statistical terms, a youth is TWICE as likely to begin smoking in high school if both his parents smoke than he is if neither of them smokes.
Indicative of the reasons children begin smoking is a survey of 1,307 school children in Hertfordshire, England, a few years ago.
The survey revealed children began smoking:
To feel big — 244.
To copy adults — 221.
To show off — 215.
To appear grown up — 198.
Because friends do — 124.
To copy parents — 104.
If you put copying adults and parents together, you find that 325 smoked because of the example of older people!
If you don't want your children to smoke, WHAT KIND OF EXAMPLE are you setting for them?
Take another look at these reasons given by children for smoking. If you add "to appear grown up" to the two we just mentioned, a total of 523 began smoking because of the fact that ADULTS SMOKED! Children are the world's greatest IMITATORS! "Like father, like son" is very true.
Young boys and girls want to be "grown up." They want to be like Mom and Dad. They want to feel "big" and "important." Those are the underlying, BASIC REASONS children begin smoking!
It all boils down to vanity — a desire to exalt and enlarge the Self — to make oneself more important. This is VANITY!
YOU probably began smoking for much the same reason! Think back. That is, if you are a smoker. You probably started smoking because your parents did, or it seemed the grown-up thing to do, it was socially accepted, and — also — YOUR friends and associates did it.
Isn't that right?
VANITY OF VANITIES!
Too many people are victims of society. They do whatever OTHER PEOPLE do. They follow the herd like dumb sheep. They don't think for themselves. They don't analyze the consequences or count the COST. And when it comes to smoking, the cost can be enormous — your life itself!
What about it?
If you are a smoker, the real reason you began smoking and have continued, is NOT because you really enjoy cigarettes — is it?
No, be honest with yourself. Sure, you might think smoking helps you relax, relieves anxiety and tension. But does it? Medical evidence shows that on the contrary, smoking actually is a vicious cycle — it ADDS TO ANXIETY, increases TENSION!
The claim that smoking calms nerves is one of the biggest deceptions ever practiced!
Dr. Clarence Lieb said, "Nervous smokers smoke to relieve their tension. This relief is only temporary. Smoking in turn increases tension. And . . . so goes this vicious circle."
Dr. Harold Dingeman said, "Smokers suffer 76% more from nervousness than nonsmokers."
Said Dr. Robert Jackson, "If one has a NEED for a cigarette . . . that's because he became the SLAVE of a toxic product — and this need clearly proves that the poisons have started their deadly work. The more a man will continue to whip his nerves with such help, the more his nerves will become abnormal."
All the tobacco does IS APPEASE THE CRAVING of the cigarette addict!
Let's not kid ourselves. The reason people smoke, when you get down to it, is two-fold. First, they began in most cases because of the INFLUENCE of other people who smoked, notably their parents!
And once a person is "hooked" on smoking, he continues — not because of the relaxation and relief it affords, but — because he is psychologically, emotionally, mentally HOOKED on the drug! He craves the effect of the nicotine and the tars. He has become a whimpering, cringing, crawling, abject SLAVE of the cigarette god!
The cigarette is his master. He is its worshipful, adoring, trembling SLAVE!
Truth about Filters
But wait, you say — what about filter-tip cigarettes?
Won't filter-tips protect your health — safeguard you from the danger of cancer?
Filter-tipped cigarettes, dominating the market today, have a big sales appeal to smokers because they claim — either overtly or covertly — to cut down the amount of tar and nicotine and thereby are "safer" than regular cigarettes.
The facts, however, show that filters do an inefficient job and in a great number of instances filter-tip cigarettes give a HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF TARS and nicotine than do regular cigarettes! (Don't Let Smoking Kill You, page 93)
A four-year survey conducted at Stockholm, Sweden, revealed that filter-tipped cigarettes are NOT always less dangerous than those without tips. The survey, published in the Swedish Medical Journal, analyzed the tar and nicotine yield of 35 leading American, French, British and Scandinavian brands. It disclosed that several filter-tipped cigarettes had a HIGHER YIELD than ordinary cigarettes and that even tipped and non-tipped cigarettes of the same brand sometimes gave equal yields of tar and nicotine! (Reuters, December 11, 1968)
At a Congressional hearing on cigarette advertising claims, it was revealed that one manufacturer's regular-sized cigarette yields less tar and nicotine than the same manufacturer's filter-tip product, or its king-sized brand! Another company put out a filter-tip that yielded less tar but more nicotine!
In one case, manufacturers developed a filter-tip that was extremely effective too effective for smokers! All it let through was a lot of hot air. Needless to say, the brand was not very popular until the manufacturer modified the filter, letting through more nicotine and tar!
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That, in a nutshell, is the trouble with filters. If the filter is good enough to remove the tars and nicotine, there is no pleasure in smoking — so why smoke? If the filter does let through enough of the tars and nicotine to affect the human body, then there is the danger of disease, CANCER, and a horrible DEATH!
Studies reveal that very little of the tars or nicotine is removed from cigarettes by filters. The overall difference from one brand to another is negligible.
For many reasons, therefore, no filter-tip cigarette can be considered to have eliminated whatever health hazard is present in smoking! In fact, some of the filter-tips are more harmful than regular cigarettes because of the lower-grade tobaccos they use!
Dr. C. W. Lieb declared that the fact that the filters masquerade as an aid to health, while they are no such thing, is to his mind, "the shame of the filters."
The Surgeon-General's Report states emphatically, "NO METHOD of treating tobacco or filtering the smoke has been demonstrated to be effective in materially reducing or eliminating the hazard of lung cancer.
"Present knowledge indicates that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to filter selectively, specific components such as carcinogens."
For this reason, the report concludes, ". . . the individual person's risk of lung cancer can best be reduced by the elimination of SMOKING"!
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"Forget about the weight! Just remember that you're using the best filter money can buy!"
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The answer is not changing to filters, or to a pipe — the solution to the cigarette peril is to STOP SMOKING!