Cigarette Smoking by Napa Register

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 7, 1882

Cigarette Smoking.

By Napa Register

Cigarette smoking prevails to an alarming extent among the youngsters of California. It is a very injurious habit for older persons to indulge in, but when little tots are seen sucking away at the death-dealing twist, it is a matter for sad reflection. Parents should be very watchful. The boys are sly, and many an unsuspecting father has a boy who indulges when out of his sight, as well as the street gamin. One of the most disgusting features of cigarette smoking, is the custom of lighting them just at the close of public meetings, and puffing the villainous fumes, fraught with horrid stench, into the faces of gentlemen and ladies present. It is not so bad for men to have to submit to a thing of that kind, for most men are users of the weed in some shape, but it is a burning shame to cause the ladies of an assembly to pass through a gauntlet of urchins whose chief business in hand seems to be to generate an impenetrable cloud of tobacco smoke. Nor is this obnoxious custom confined to the doorways of theaters and halls; it is carried into the sacred precincts of the house of God. Santa Cruz has a local law prohibiting the smoking in public of cigarettes by boys under eighteen, and it is certainly a righteous ordinance, and should be adopted by every city in the State.— Napa Register.