Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1912

The Cigarette Menace

MULTITUDES recognize the fearful inroads being made upon the mental and physical vitality of the race by the deadly cigarette, and yet, through the lust of perverted appetite on the part of the individual and the greed for gold on the part of the tobacconist, the evil grows and its debasing work increases from year to year. Concerning this evil the Christian Advocate (Methodist) says:—

In spite of all efforts made by many organizations, and in spite of the disfavor in which cigarettes are held by many people, cigarette smoking gains steadily year by year. The total number made in factories last year was nearly ten billion, not counting the innumerable cigarettes made one at a time by those who smoked them. The total consumption probably amounts to two hundred cigarettes a year for each person in the United States. When it is considered that these are not distributed per capita, since cigarette smokers are a small minority of the whole population, the grip of the habit upon its victims, for such they are, is seen to be almost unbreakable. At the same time the cigarette is becoming more fully recognized as a fire menace. The other day a big automobile fire-engine was sent through the streets of New York equipped with a sign reading “Throwing away lighted cigars and cigarettes and so endangering life and property is now a misdemeanor and will be prosecuted.” The great Equitable fire in New York was probably due to a cigarette, thrown carelessly into a pile of inflammable material.

The worst phase of the matter is not the destruction of property through fires started by cigarette stubs, but the destruction of the higher instincts in the souls of the smokers, the blunting of conscience, and the evil tendencies passed on to the next generation.