TOBACCO, ITS DEBILITATING EFFECTS ON ALL THE BODILY TISSUES
By Kate Lindsay
While many earnest temperance workers are willing to sign and circulate a pledge to abstain from strong drink in any form, they do not see that it is almost, if not wholly, as great a damage to the human body to be poisoned and made ill by other forms of narcotics, and consequently the almost universal use of tobacco does not come under the ban of their displeasure. If true emancipation and individual freedom mean release from the enslavement of the alcohol habit, it means, as well, freedom from any other deadly drug which begets, by its use, a craving that can be satisfied only by continual gratification, and which contains a poison as detrimental to all the functions of the body as alcohol. The use of tobacco is a filthy habit, which defiles the body, both externally and internally. The chemist has extracted from tobacco a strong poison named nicotine. It is one of the most powerful and deadly drugs known, and every boy and young man, in his first efforts to become enslaved, experiences its sickening effects. Like alcohol, the nicotine cripples the action of every organ in the body; it stupefies and benumbs the action of the brain; it interferes with the function of the digestive organs, and impoverishes all the structures by robbing them of needed nutrition. It hinders the action of the eliminative organs, and predisposes to what is known as auto-infection, or self-poisoning, because the wastes of the body are not properly removed. While the extreme results of acute alcoholic poisoning are usually more intense and more marked in their outward manifestations than those of tobacco, it would be no easy matter to decide which does the greatest actual damage to the human race—tobacco or alcohol. Both hinder the healthy action of every member of the body; both render it filthy, and fill it with all manner of impurities; both damage the intellect and the morals of the race. The boy who begins smoking when young is stunted and degenerate in size and physical strength. His vital organs are weak, and their action often irregular. The medical examiners who inspected the recruits for the American army in the late war with Spain are said to have rejected as high as ninety per cent of the volunteers who were habitual cigarette users, and especially those who began the habit early. It were surely as reasonable, for rational humanity to sign a pledge promising to abstain from this deadly poison, as it is to promise to forego the use of strong drink. Both these habits are very exacting and selfish in their demands. For strong drink a man will sacrifice all his wealth, his intellect, health, morals, and his hope for life now and hereafter. He will also barter his family's food and raiment. In the place of a husband's kindly care and a father's protection, he will give them only cold neglect and brutal abuse. The tobacco slave will spend his money for the filthy weed, even when his family need food and clothing. It is not only his master, but his deity; for he worships it above all other things either in heaven or on earth. For it he will neglect his duty to his Maker, himself, his family, and his country, and also trespass on the rights of his neighbors. Who, like the tobacco user, can so defile the air, and make unpleasant the surroundings of his fellow traveler by land or sea? He fills the atmosphere with the fumes, and covers the vessel's decks, and car and carriage floors, with filthy expectoration. The Scriptures tell plainly that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. In 1 Cor. 3:17 is the solemn warning, “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” Who, with all these facts before him, does not feel that there is need for Pledge No. 2? It forbids the use of the poisonous drug, tobacco, as well as alcohol, in the following words:— I do hereby solemnly affirm that, with the help of God, I will wholly abstain from the voluntary use of alcohol in any form, as a beverage, or in any equivalent manner, and from smoking, chewing, or snuffing tobacco, or using it in any other form, and from in any way encouraging the use of these poisons.