Nonsmokers and Babies Suffer
As if the harm smokers do to themselves is not enough, they also affect the health of innocent bystanders. According to the American Lung Association: "Even when a smoker inhales, researchers have calculated that two-thirds of the smoke from the burning cigarette goes into the environment.
"The fascinating fact is that side-stream smoke — the smoke from the burning end — has higher concentrations of noxious compounds than the mainstream smoke inhaled by the smoker. Some studies show there is twice as much tar and nicotine in side-stream smoke compared to mainstream. And three times as much of a compound called 3-4 benzpyrene, which is suspected as a cancer-causing agent. Five times as much carbon monoxide, which robs the blood of oxygen. And 50 times as much ammonia."
Even unborn babies can be adversely affected by their parents' smoking habits. Pregnant women who smoke deprive fetuses of oxy gen critical to proper growth and development. They pass nicotine and carbon monoxide through the bloodstream to the fetus. Consequently, children of smoking mothers tend to be born underweight, underdeveloped, and more vulnerable to illness. The National Children's Bureau in Britain has found that babies of women who smoke during pregnancy have a 30 percent higher incidence of death just after birth than babies born to nonsmoking mothers.
The smoking father may even be implicated in the fetus mortality rate. According to an eight-Near study by the German Research Society, children whose fathers smoke at least ten cigarettes a day run a higher risk of dying at birth than babies of nonsmokers because the male sperm is damaged by excessive intake of nicotine.
. . . But Also a Big Business
These are real horror stories based on exhaustive research. So where is the hysteria, the clamor for a ban on all tobacco use? Why aren't people who work for tobacco companies and advertising agencies harassed, arrested and convicted for purveying and pushing a dangerous drug? Why isn't tobacco banned because it poses a threat to public health, a menace to our way of life?
The answer is that tobacco is so much a part of our way of life. It has been around so long and is so popular it isn't even perceived by most people to be a drug. And there are vested interests in its use. Globally, it is a multibillion-dollar industry. It is a big cash crop in the United States, and its sale a big business and major source of tax revenue in many countries. In the United States alone, federal and excise taxes on tobacco products yield nearly $6 billion in revenue a year.
To be sure, there was an uproar when the Report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health was published in 1964. There was a decline in smoking in the United States from 523.9 billion cigarettes in 1964 to 511.2 billion in 1965.
In the decade following the Surgeon General's report more than ten million smokers gave up their habit. The actual number of smokers kept declining until 1971. (Yet the number of cigarettes smoked rebounded to new highs in 1966 and succeeding years, which meant that fewer people were smoking more cigarettes) Since then the number of smokers has increased, until in 1976 over 50 million Americans smoked over 620 billion cigarettes.
The reversal of the downward trend in 1971 coincided with the ban on cigarette advertising from TV and radio by federal law. One would expect this would have removed some desire for smoking.
However, since TV and radio broadcasters could no longer carry cigarette advertising, they felt no obligation to continue the antismoking messages of the American Cancer Society and other organizations required under the Fairness Doctrine.
Significantly, the sharpest drop in cigarette smoking occurred between 1967 and 1971 when the televised antismoking messages were at their height. In face-to-face competition with smoking ads, the antismoking campaign was effective.
Eliminate by 21st Century?
A few other countries, notably Great Britain, have followed the U.S. and banned the advertising of cigarettes on TV. Tobacco companies in a growing number of countries are required to print health warnings on packages and in ads.
In the United States, nonsmokers are pushing for a bill of rights to greatly restrict public smoking. Norway is engaged in an antismoking campaign banning the advertising of all tobacco products in newspapers and magazines as well as by the electronic media. Shopkeepers can't even display their tobacco wares in the windows. And Sweden has undertaken the ambitious goal of eradicating smoking in a generation through an education program.
At the Third Conference on Smoking and Health in 1975, Sir George E. Godber of Britain, chairman of the expert Committee on Smoking and Health of the World Health Association, advocated the effort to by and large eliminate cigarette smoking by the end of this century.
"We may not have eliminated cigarette smoking completely by the end of this century," he said, "but we ought to have reached a position where relatively few addicts still use cigarettes, but only in private, at most in the company of consenting adults."
Despite the progress made in some countries, it would seem that cigarette smoking is here to stay for quite some time. As was pointed out earlier, no culture that has ever been introduced to tobacco has been able to kick the habit. Even while envisioning a relatively smoke-free twenty-first century, Dr. Godber conceded that to date "most countries have pursued their action in desultory fashion, have achieved only limited progress . . . [and] have lost in some other directions."
Slow Suicide
And so clouds of tobacco smoke continue to foul the air of smoker and nonsmoker alike. And the grim death toll continues to mount. In the time it has taken you to read this brief article, at least 60 people have died prematurely because of tobacco.
And in most cases, their deaths were the denouement of a prolonged decline in health and wellbeing. Tobacco is cruel in that it kills slowly by means of such afflictions as cancer and emphysema.”Nothing kills as slowly and painfully as the cigarette," said Dr. Hollis S. Ingraham, onetime Commissioner of Health for New York State.
"I was married to a chain-smoker for 50 years and 11 days when he expired at 79 years old," said one widow.”He had smoked one and a half packs a day for 60 years. He had so many illnesses . . . He quit several times and started again. The last time was when he was told he had emphysema. He lived six more years but needed medication and oxygen all the time . . . I suffered watching him commit suicide because of cigarettes."
Are you committing slow suicide with your tobacco habit? What are you going to do about it?