SELLING TOBACCO by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1877

SELLING TOBACCO.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Should Seventh-day Adventists sell tobacco? Of course not, for many good reasons. As a people, S. D. Adventists are thoroughly settled that tobacco-using is a bad, unjustifiable practice; because, in the first place, the system does not need it. It does nobody any good. In the next place, it does positive injury. It is a strong poison. No one can for years take into his system a poison without injuring him. Then it is a nasty, filthy habit, as everybody admits. It defiles a man’s mouth, blackens his teeth, soils his beard, and besmears everything where he is. Wherever a tobacco-user goes, he leaves his mark. You can track him in the church, in his own parlor, in the cars, and along the street. You can smell him in every wave of wind that passes his defiled body. His breath is offensive.

Furthermore, it costs money, an immense amount of money—money for which God will hold every man accountable, money which the cause of God needs, and money which should be paid for religious papers, for missionary work, and a thousand other good things. This the tobacco-user throws away. I know a professed Christian elder in Missouri who pays 37½ cents a year to support the cause of God, about which he talks very eloquently, but at the same time he pays the nice little sum of $20.00 a year for tobacco! Which God does he love best? Judge ye. From the above considerations the members of our churches do not use tobacco. Then we ask you, Can they conscientiously sell it to others? Of course they cannot. Hence none of our brethren who keep store or grocery deal in the article. I write this for the benefit of those newly embracing the faith, who probably might overlook this item, and engage in this bad business without thinking how wrong it is.

D. M. CANRIGHT.