Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 22, 1882

Temperance.

Cigar-Stubs and Opium.

I RAN across a cigarette factory the other day. Whew! I wouldn't write—or, rather, you wouldn't dare print what I saw. Dirty butts of cigars fresh from the filth of the muddy streets are the cleanest and nicest of the material used in compiling these precious roads to ruin. I came down town on a Madison Avenue car recently, and on the tail end there were three little chaps, the oldest about 14. Each smoked a cigarette, and spat his little life away. I ventured to ask if they enjoyed the odor. They said they did. And the taste? Certainly. On inquiring, I found they had a well-known brand of cigarette, noted for its "opium soak" and its terrible smell when burning.

Day by day vice grows stronger. There was a time when cigarette smoking was confined almost entirely to Cubans, who knew what good tobacco was, and made their own cigarettes. Gradually the habit spread. Dealers followed suit. Makers became unscrupulous. Little dirty boys were sent out to pick up cigar stumps. Other equally disgusting material was also utilized. Opium was made to do duty. Cheap paper took the place of rice paper. I wish these boys could see the stuff their paper is made from.

The cheap paper, the old stumps, the opium, and the chemicals used to make them "strong" deserve to be shown up. Parents have no influence with their sons. Why not? Because they smoke cigars or pipes, themselves. The boys charge all the good advice they get, to their fathers' desire to keep them down. There is but one way to deal with American boys. Reason with them through their eyes. If every nicotined stomach was made public, if every time a fellow died of too much cigarette, the fact was made known, if the proud boys could be shown a rag factory and stump grindery, it seems to me the cigarette business would be wound up very soon.—Sel.