CIGARETTE SMOKING

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1880

CIGARETTE SMOKING.

If the numerous young men and boys in this city would give a good sober thought to the effect that the pernicious habit of cigarette smoking is having on them and stop it, we are convinced that their mental and moral natures would be vastly improved. A dirtier and more pernicious habit never became engrafted upon the youth of a country. It may seem to be a very graceful accomplishment to be able to take the tobacco and place it in a piece of paper and with a twist of the fingers roll it into a cigarette, light it and draw the smoke into the throat and then allow great volumes of it to pass through the nostrils, making the nose look like the smokestack of a steamboat. But we tell our young readers that when they are able to do this they have entered on a course that will dull their intellect, sap their vitality, and in time will bring on the most painful results. It is a well-known fact that an indulgence of this habit by boys will degenerate their physical nature and cause the most dangerous of throat diseases.

Our attention was called the other day, to a little fellow just able to run around the streets, propped up against the side of a building and puffing away at a cigarette. It is wicked. Parents cannot be too strict in regard to this terrible habit. If the fearful consequences, and often fatal results, were early impressed on the children, the habit would be stopped. If, however, they throw aside all the advice and friendly counsel, and continue, we candidly tell them that they might as well give up all hopes of ever becoming anybody in the world.—Weekly Mercury.