WHY DO MEN SMOKE TOBACCO?
THIS is a very simple question. When a man takes up his pipe or cigar, he is aiming at something. He may never have put the thought into words; still, there is a thought which words might express. What, then, does he really propose to himself? Is he seeking merely to escape the uneasiness caused by a few hours’ abstinence? Does he look for a subtle, sensuous enjoyment? To these plain questions it seems impossible to obtain an intelligible reply from those who certainly ought to know. Replies such as these are, may not indeed be refused. Some say they smoke “because they like it,” or because it is a “habit they acquired long ago,” but these answers leave the darkness as dense as ever. What, then, is the nature of the effect which tobacco produces upon the mind and body, and from which arises its power to please and to enslave? The experience of the novice is not hard to comprehend. In ordinary cases it amounts to about this: A very few puffs of the cigar create a tremor of the nerves, a giddiness of the brain, which shows that an enemy is at work. As the smoking proceeds, the symptoms grow more decided, the physical distress more apparent, and soon the daring experimenter is, as he thinks, almost dying. His face is livid, like that of a corpse, the breathing is labored, cold drops of sweat stand upon the forehead, the muscles of the whole frame are relaxed and powerless; and the victim of his own folly, or of some one else’s cruel sport, pants in an agony of nausea and loathing indescribable. After the lapse of an hour or two the effects subside, and the smoker revives, and laughs in a dubious, sickly way at results which God designed to make a warning so plain that even a fool may not err in regard to its meaning. But take the case of the confirmed smoker, who has been for years cultivating the habit, and who now consumes daily a dozen cigars. Suppose him to come home at night, after a busy afternoon, during which he has found no time to eat, rest, or smoke. He is weary and hungry; but the strongest, most clamorous appetite is the hunger for tobacco. He therefore eats his supper in haste, that he may smoke at his leisure afterward. His hurried meal being over, he seizes his cigar, and the first three whiffs give him more apparent pleasure than all the healthful food, or even luxuries, of which he has partaken. As he puffs away, his enjoyment seems to increase. The powerful narcotic begins to operate; his nerves sink into a delicious quiet, and his whole being yields to a pleasant repose. His weariness is at an end; his cares no longer perplex him; the annoyances of the day are forgotten. Lighting a second cigar at the stump of the first, he slides down lower in his chair, gets his feet a little higher, and feels the tide of pleasure still rising. He is conscious of a high state of enjoyment which does not connect itself with any thought, yet seems too ethereal to belong to the body alone. The brain, too, responds to the power of the drug, and he appears to himself to possess unusual clearness and fertility of ideas, and unwonted power of expression. In fact, the man is under the influence of one of the milder forms of intoxication. And this gentle inebriation is the precise thing for which those hunger and thirst, who are the victims of the habit, and the intoxicating element in tobacco is the deadly poison already described. Without the power to intoxicate, tobacco would cease to be what it is. The appetite is not satisfied till enough of the venom has been absorbed to produce a certain effect. All this is a mere pretence, a self-deception. If a man who is thoroughly committed to tobacco habits uses mild tobacco, he uses more of it. If he uses the fresh, long clay pipe, he will smoke the longer. He will not be content until the brain and nerves are affected to a certain definite degree, and anything short of this is only an aggravation. A man with a cigar in his mouth, and fully under its influence, is slower in thought, slower in action, has fewer ideas, has less feeling, is less of a man in every respect, than at other times. His drug dulls and belittles him at every point. He may not be conscious of his loss. He may aver stoutly that his mind never works with more freedom and force than when he thus indulges. But impartial observers, not addicted to the habit, know better. Note the progress of things at some little gathering of friends for an evening’s entertainment. Before supper, and at the table, how animated the conversation, how full of mind, wit, humor, intelligence, force. There is a steady rise in interest and the mental enjoyment, till the time comes when the host, knowing the habits of his guests, deems it polite to invite them to another room and offer them cigars. From that moment everything declines; the mental interest and pleasure die out, the company tend to be silent, or utter speech which is no improvement on silence, and the affair is over. The habit is unclean; the tobacco-user can not gratify his desires without poisoning the very air for others to breathe; his clothes, his books, the house in which he lives, everything that belongs to him becomes tainted, and exhales an ill odor which he does not suspect, but of which others are painfully conscious. Many who chew keep up an incessant spatter of saliva. The defilement of public conveyances will hardly bear an allusion. Why not give up the dirty habit? Why be a slave any longer? Don’t waste the money that God has given you for other purposes; don’t pollute the pure, life-giving air that God has given to take into our lungs. Stop! friend, stop! You say you can’t. I say you can. There is a sovereign remedy for the tobacco habit, I care not how strong the habit may be, and it is found in the all-atoning blood of Jesus Christ. Believe on Him, and He will save you from all sin, and cleanse you from all iniquity; and that includes the tobacco question.—Selected.