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THE “DAINTY” CIGARET

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 33.

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THE “DAINTY” CIGARET.

Scavengers going about picking “snipes” (cigar stubs) is a familiar sight. From the gutters, from hotel and saloon cuspidors, no matter from whence they are taken or from whose mouth they and the rejected quids of tobacco may have come, all find a place in the bag or basket. These are taken to the manufactory, ground up and mixed with any old thing for filling, wood pulp and chopped straw being largely used, and are then ready to be doctored. Liquor, opium, cocaine, Havana flavoring, belladonna (the deadly nightshade), are all found in the cigaret by chemical analysis. After becoming thoroughly permeated, this mass is rolled up in its paper wrapping, an imitation of rice paper, which can be made so cheaply that 1,000 can be wrapped in two cents worth. This is often made of filthy rag scrapings, bleached with arsenic, which in burning forms the oil of creosote. In rolling cigarets the rollers constantly moisten their fingers from their mouths. Many of the cigarets are wrapped in filthy tenements, sometimes in the very room with the most loathsome disease, and leprosy has been known to be thus disseminated.
Fastidious young men who despise a pipe about their pockets, and enjoy the “clean,” dainty cigaret, may possibly not have so clean a smoke after all. The facts here given have been widely published, and persons familiar with the business vouch for their truthfulness. The thousands of cigars thrown away but partly smoked every day in our cities afford cigaret manufacturers a fine source of income, and account somewhat for the tremendous profits in the business.
Most of the nicotine of a cigar is drawn by the moisture of the lips into what the smoker throws away. This makes it the more valuable for the cigaret maker, and the boy gets the poison thrown away by his father. Can the reader of this wonder at the deadly effect cigaret smoking is having?—Christian Citizen.