An ode to tobacco

Where there's smoke....

I have never smoked.  However, mum did.  She smoked as a way of diet control: she had a cigarette instead of a snack, or dessert.  

When she gave it up, she went through a withdrawal that was painful to witness, and I tried to give shape to that pain in the following article called 'No Smoking'. 

It was published as a newspaper column in 1990, and brought down the wrath of the Tobacco Institute: their letter (more a diatribe, really) to the newspaper is reproduced below my article.  

The Tobacco Institute's response prompted others to express opposing views.  These letters are also included.  

NO SMOKING

Tobacco is a dirty weed; I like it.

It satisfies no normal need; I like it.

It makes you thin, it makes you lean,

It takes the hair right off your bean;

It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen,

I like it.

Graham Hemminger.

Smokers know they are addicted to cigarettes.  It just doesn't feel like an addiction until they try and stop.

Then they notice.  All they can think about is a cigarette.  Any cigarette; well, half a cigarette; that butt in the ashtray will do or just a tiny puff…and after that, they'll give them up.

Smokers also know that succumbing to an addiction does not advance humans as a species on the evolutionary scale.  They know (mercifully not by sight), that their lungs are dripping with black slag.  Every day, they are reminded that each cigarette is a nail in their coffin. 

So the segregation begins.  Smokers stink of nicotine which they cannot smell themselves because, as non-smokers point out, tobacco dulls the senses.  They have two or more orange fingers and the occasional orange tooth.  Smokers who started young are stunted - even the tall ones, who would have been taller.

Because of a personal insecurity which is either a consequence or a cause of smoking, they always have cigarettes upon their person.  If that supply runs out, they always know who else has a cigarette they can borrow. 

And, always there is the problem of disposing of those major pollutants - butts, ash and smoke.  Cigarettes meet an untidy end in empty beer cans, the dregs of coffee or in the toilet bowl, where they won't flush away.  The smoke permeates the drapes and carpet, and leaves the air smelling second hand.

Fresh cigarette ash, as tiny red coals, burns holes in furniture, clothes and people.  The cold ash sprinkles into drinks, desserts or onto the cream carpet.  So the segregation continues.

Smoking is now an anti-social act.  The world is becoming a smoke-free zone and cigarettes are no longer allowed in work places, theatres, restaurants or anywhere near a non-smoker.  However, smokers can light up in trains and planes - as long as they step outside.

Smoking is discouraged while others eat, but some cheat and smoke during dessert, preferring the cigarette to the sweet.  They cling to their sole remaining right to smoke with coffee, cup after cup after cup.

While smokers are being edged out of society, the cigarette is being taxed out of their income, and is gradually pricing some smokers clear out of their addiction.

But, not the hardened smokers, even if they have to roll their own.  They smoke on - in moments of boredom, of stress, of calm.  They hold the cigarette scissored between the first two fingers and, whenever they remember, they put it in their mouths and breathe it in.

If both hands are engaged, they clench the cigarette between the teeth.  The smoke wafts into the eyes, producing the famous smokers' squint.  And, until the filter sogs and sags, they can still talk with their lips together, although they may not pronounce their vowels as roundly as they would like.

No one really knows why smokers must smoke.  Non-smoking theorists suggest smokers were deprived of their dummies when they were babies and this, combined with a defect in their personalities, creates a compulsion to suck something.  Smokers answer that a cigarette is merely a mechanical device that stops them eating and drinking too much, or climbing the walls with tension, at the same time keeping the economy fluid and besides, everybody should mind their own business.

But it is everybody's business because cigarette smoke, as a pretty cloud, floats unerringly to the nearest non-smoker, whose lungs are innocent of smoke.  Nature, in her wisdom, abhors a vacuum.

Some smokers smoke in bed and, if they go to sleep with the cigarette in their mouths, it falls onto their nylon nighties and burns them up.  Sometimes they survive.

Some smokers see another smoker have a massive heart attack, and this terrifies them into giving up smoking.  If this terror is stronger than the desire to smoke, the separation from cigarettes will be permanent.

Nevertheless, those first weeks of withdrawal are an agony, not only for ex-smokers, but for all who speak to them, walk by them, sit beside them, look at them, live with them or do anything which might suggest cigarettes, such as burning the toast.

Time pacifies them, and they become non-smokers, but always they are divided by two emotions: a yearning for their dear dead friend, the cigarette; and pride that they mastered their killer, the cigarette.

But, in moments of doubt, they wonder if they have really be snatched from the jaws of death.  All around them they see smokers still in the grip of the addiction that kills and maims.  Why don't they all, without exception, die of heart or lung failure at 36 years of age?  Why do some smokers live long, full, rich healthy lives?  Is there any justice?

END


Letters to the Editor (two days later)...

SMOKER BASHING SMACKS OF INTOLERANCE
SIR, Your columnist's intolerant approach to the smoker and smoking is an unfortunate example of the current fashionable popularity given to criticism of the lifestyle and behaviour of our fellow man.

It is disappointing that the author, from her position as a press columnist should feel entitled to set about to so determinedly malign a custom which has been accepted for decades, is not illegal and which has been chosen as a preferred behaviour by some four million Australian adults.

Your columnist says, "No one really knows why people smoke".  We may as well question why the individual chooses to follow ANY particular behaviour, but William Thackeray's words "I vow and believe that the cigar has been one of the greatest creature comforts of my life - a kind companion, a gentle stimulant and an amiable anodyne, a cementer of friendship" may perhaps provide some learned enlightenment behind the smoker's perception of his custom.

However, more than any of the broad assumptions, inaccuracies and exaggerations in her column, it is your columnist's pronouncement that "smoking is now an anti-social act" which serves as a worrying demonstration of a growing intolerance in the community - an intolerance of the right of the individual to pursue his or her chosen lifestyle.

This is not to suggest that your columnist or anyone else must necessarily approve of the chosen lifestyle of another individual, however this single-minded display of an attitude which promotes the open criticism  and denigration of another individual's preferences - in this case the decision to smoke - should be of concern to all in our community who value the principle and recognition of the freedom of the individual.

Put simply, the propagation of attitudes such as those expressed in this column should have no place in a tolerant society.  

Perhaps your columnist and those who would support her intolerant view of the preferences of others should be reminded of US professor James Buchanan's warning that "any attempt to impose one person's preferences on the behaviour of another must be predicted to set off reciprocal attempts to have one's own behaviour constrainted in a like fashion".
RICHARD J. MULCAHY, Chief Executive Officer, Tobacco Institute of Australia, Sydney.


Letters to the Editor (four days later)...

A CREATURE COMFORT ...
SIR, The Tobacco Institute's chief executive, Richard J. Mulcahy, must be desperate to quote Thackeray to provide enlightenment (sic) on how addicts perceive smoking.

Of course, while Thackeray, a social satirist, was paying tribute to the cigar as a "creature comfort", his era was not exactly edifying.

Children were being pushed down mines and up chimneys; women were dying at childbirth because surgeons failed to wash their hands; and people were taking arsenic as a cure for syphilis.

And Thackeray's contemporary, Samuel Coleridge, was addicted to opium, which he claimed helped him write his poetry.

But it proved to be an albatross: he never achieved his full potential, mainly because Coleridge admitted being constantly doped out of his mind.

Incidentally, Mr Mulcahy, opium was legal at the time.  And, yes, tolerated by society.
 (Dr) PETER SAGO, W. McKEOWN, PHIL THORNTON, Paddington, NSW.


Another letter to the Editor (same day)...

...LIKE SPITTING IN PUBLIC
Sir, Richard J. Mulcahy of the Tobacco Institute called for more tolerance towards the habit of smokers.  I agree that tolerance is certainly necessary.

However, smokers must also learn to respect the rights of others to be able to breathe clean air. I have no objection to smoking, providing it is "restricted to consenting adults in private!"  Like spitting, it should not be carried out in public - especially in restaurants.
BRIAN SNAPE, East Hawthorn, Vic.