WOMEN AND TOBACCO by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 20, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 20.

WOMEN AND TOBACCO.

By Editor

LAST week we copied a short article which showed how rapidly the use of tobacco, in the form of cigarets, is increasing among girls. The following is from a recent number of a French paper of Paris, Les Annales; and it must be confessed that it presents in a lightsome style a deplorable tale:—

“M. Decroix, the delightful president of the Society for the Prevention of the Abuse of Tobacco, must have jumped for joy at reading in the papers that the young czarina is so opposed to the use of cigarets that she is trying to take some action in her own immediate circle against the habit of smoking, which has become quite prevalent among women in the best society in Russia.

“M. Decroix would no doubt like to see the sovereigns of other countries imitate this example, for during the past few years the cigaret habit has been laying hold of women all over the world.

“In France the association of men and women in all kinds of sports has been the cause of a greater degree of intimacy, and has brought us to accept the cigaret, whose use is extending among young women of the most exclusive circles. . . .

“In all times Spanish women have smoked, and not only cigarets, but cigars. Marbot, in his ‘Memoirs,’ tells us this without mincing matters. And they smoke in England and in the United States, altho in the latter country it is only recently that women have begun to use tobacco. . . .

“To confine one’s observations to those in the highest places, it may be said that the empress of Austria smokes from thirty to forty cigarets a day; the dowager empress of Russia smokes, but only in her private apartments, while the queen of Roumania, the queen regent of Spain, Queen Amalia, of Portugal—who in this respect is following her mother’s example—the wife of the Comte de Paris, and, lastly, the queen of Italy, are all confirmed smokers. And yet M. Decroix is anxious that kings and princes and their august consorts should be the ones to set a good example. At one time, about two years ago, he had a hopeful moment. It is well known that Queen Victoria is fond of snuff, and that her son, the Prince of Wales, smokes cigars from morning until night.”