TOBACCO by Dr. F. H. Hanaford

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 20, 1882

TOBACCO.

By Dr. F. H. Hanaford

I as firmly believe that tobacco is the sensual partner of whisky as I do my existence. Though it does not produce the immediate effects of alcohol, does not produce the same boisterousness, the same temporary insanity, it feeds the same general stream of vice and ruin. I never knew of but one drunkard who did not use tobacco, though all tobacco-users do not use spirits regularly. The tobacco creates an abnormal state of the system, creates an unnatural thirst, naturally demanding alcohol as its proper ally. I as fully condemn gross habits of living, the immoderate use of stimulants, including the excessive use of the more stimulating flesh (see the Scriptures, in which drunkenness is coupled with “riotous eating of flesh,” excess, and wantonness). The contents of the castor—containing no nourishment whatever—all of the irritants, all unnatural food, so far as they tend to produce unnatural conditions, must sow the seeds of intemperance, quickened into activity and growth by any and all favoring influences. For this reason the “temperate in all things” are the least liable to become drunkards.—Dr. F. H. Hanaford.