Women and the Cigarette Habit
THE addiction of women to the cigarette habit is now added to other indications of the degeneracy of the times. Recently the subject has been quite fully discussed among women in this country, and by some the practise has been frankly indorsed. This has called out from the head of the Anti-Cigarette League, Lucy Page Gaston, an open letter, in which she says that though “it has been denied repeatedly by those jealous of the good name of American women that cigarette smoking prevails to any considerable extent among respectable classes,” nevertheless the practise “by American women is unfortunately no longer an open question. Recent developments have brought prominently to the front existing conditions.” “Are we as a nation,” she inquires, “ready to face the fearful consequences of the wide-spread use of cigarettes by women?” Tobacco, cocaine, alcohol, opium, and other drugs are steadily gaining a hold upon the human race, which, in time, unless some miraculous power should intervene, would result in its extinction.