The Tobacco Question by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 31, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 13.

The Tobacco Question

By Editor

We are glad to note the agitation that there is over the tobacco question. Of course it will not affect the great mass. Millions will go on paying their devotions to the nicotin deity the same as ever, but there are young men who will stop and think, and thinking, will act right. What a blessing it would be if the youth and young men of this country to-day would eschew tobacco forever. Entirely apart from the religious and moral phases, which are the greatest factors after all, what a mighty blessing it would be economically! Think of the farms and buildings and houses and property of various kinds in prospect, which are burned up at the end of cigars and cigarettes! But more than all else think of the finer elements of morality and keen sensitiveness which are consumed in the same way! Tobacco benumbs and stupefies. Every physician, every tobacco-user knows it. May not the use of tobacco for generations have something to do with benumbing of conscience as manifest in commercial circles to-day? Men come to that place where they are unable to discriminate between right and wrong, and if they do see it, conscience is so hardened that it becomes a matter of a joke rather than involving a serious moral principle. There is a real joy in being free from any enslaving habit, of being able to stand in one's own manhood, free from anything that would drag him down. Better it is, never to form such a habit, but if one has not strength to break from it in himself, he will find sufficient strength in the Lord Jesus Christ. Every tobacco user or whisky toper may be a free man in Him.