p. 561 | Women and Tobacco by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 14, 1882

Women and Tobacco

By Editor

A CHICAGO paper says that it is getting to be quite common for ladies in that city to smoke, not cigarettes merely, but real cigars. It says: "Cigarette smoking is very common, and not alone among the fashionables. Women and school-girls, book-keepers, amanuenses, and shop-girls indulge in it. And they smoke not alone at home, but in private rooms of restaurants, where in threes and fours they regularly take their dinners."

Well, why should they not smoke as well as men? If smoking is beneficial, an aid to digestion, soothing to the nerves, and generally indispensable, why should women be deprived of its benefits? They certainly are as liable to dyspepsia as men are, and are commonly supposed to almost monopolize nervousness. If there is any good to be got out of it, we say let them have it, by all means. The paper, however, says further: "There is nothing unladylike in the conduct or demeanor of these girls." Opinions differ.