p. 11 | Tobacco and Crime

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 19, 1905

Tobacco and Crime

IN some of the Western States of America the remarkable crusade against cigarettes which has recently been started has led to the passing of laws which make cigarette smoking a criminal offense, punishable with severe penalties. Clergymen and temperance advocates denounce the use of cigarettes, and proclaim their pernicious effects.

Medical men assert that the excessive smoking of cigarettes is wrecking the minds of the young men and boys, and leading to the wholesale committal of crimes.

Anti-Cigarette Leagues have been organized in many places, and as the movement is steadily growing, the doom of the “paper pipe” has, it is thought, already been sounded.

The tobacco trust is preparing to spend enormous sums to procure the annulment of the anti-cigarette laws, which, it declares, are unconstitutional. The dispute will shortly be taken to the highest courts.

The law recently passed in Indiana imposes a penalty on any one who sells, gives away, or has in his possession any cigarettes or cigarette paper, and the penalties are doubled with each infraction of the measure.

In some places the authorities have seized large quantities of cigarettes and burned them. Men have been arrested and fined for cigarette smoking while some few offenders have been sent to prison.

In Wisconsin a new law imposes fines of from five dollars to five hundred dollars, with an extreme penalty of six months’ imprisonment, for cigarette smoking. Informers receive half the amount of the fines.

This may seem rather hard on the tobacco devotee, and may be regarded by him as a restriction of liberty. But when the true nature of this drug, nicotin, is understood, and the injury the human system, and consequently the nation, sustains by its use is realized, it will no longer be regarded in this light. That the tobacco habit or nicotin kills our boys or makes them mentally and morally worthless (which is equally bad or worse), is now acknowledged by the leading educators and civilized countries of the world.

Laws have been passed in Canada prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and importation of cigarettes. New Zealand, New South Wales, Japan, and other countries acknowledge the evil by passing laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to youth. But why forbid the sale and manufacture of cigarettes? Is the cigarette more injurious than the cigar or pipe?—No; the reason why the cigarette is denounced is because it offers such an innocent inducement to the young or to beginners. A second reason is, being milder than the cigar or pipe, the smoke is frequently inhaled, bringing the smoke containing the nicotin in contact with one thousand or more square feet of absorbing surface, instead of one or two square feet, as is the case if only passed in and out of the mouth.

It has been found by careful analysis that about forty-nine per cent of the nicotin is found in the smoke exhaled. If inhalation of tobacco smoke is acknowledged to be so injurious, why are men permitted to walk our streets and poison the atmosphere with tobacco smoke? If our water-supply should be poisoned in this way, we would not endure it. Why should we allow men to poison the pure air we are entitled to, without protesting?

Tobacco is a more subtle poison than alcohol, and it is more difficult to overcome the smoking habit. It is probably doing as much to ruin men physically, mentally, and morally as alcohol, for the consumer of alcohol directly injures himself only, while the consumer of tobacco compels others to inhale the poison with him. . . . Both are evils that should be controlled by law.—Australasian Good Health.