THE USE OF TOBACCO by Sadie Crawford

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 18, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 42.

THE USE OF TOBACCO.

By Sadie Crawford

BY SADIE CRAWFORD.

IT is true that the habit of tobacco-using is fast becoming more prevalent every day. It seems sad to see men and women that really have not the necessaries of life, contaminating their system with the filthy weed.

I went to call on a lady the other day, who is, you might say, a cigaret fiend. They are very poor people, and have a hard way of making a living. We were talking of hard times when she made this remark to me: "If I had only one dollar in the house and was out of flour and tobacco both, I would get tobacco." What a statement for a woman with a large family to make! Why is it that men and women can not see that they are robbing their families of what they must have to sustain life? Not only that, but they fill their system so full of poison that they have not the natural use of their minds.

One may say, I don't smoke, and chewing has no effect upon the mind. But it does; it is an impossibility to take poison into your mouth and not get it into your blood. When once in your blood, it goes direct to the brain and the heart. Then what follows?—A life of slavery.

Even if those that use it do not perceptibly suffer from it, they often become responsible for the ill-health of some person who does not use it, because of the fumes that escape from their breath or even their body and clothing. Besides this, one can not walk through the halls of a hotel, in the parlor, in the depot waiting-room, or on the sidewalks, but they catch the nauseating fumes of tobacco.

I have seen men, tho they may have been raised to have the greatest respect for ladies, walking with a lady and puffing the smoke of a cigar, cigaret, or pipe into her face, without regard to its offensiveness to her. We can only account for this by the belief that their mind has become so clouded and benumbed from the constant use of tobacco that they think more of their own enjoyment than of the comfort of their associates.

Satan knows that in the matter of appetite is his greatest temptation. He tempted Eve to eat the fruit God had forbidden; he tried to tempt Christ in the same way, in the wilderness. Satan sees now that he has but a short time in which to work; he knows that men and women are weak in controlling their appetite; and that they will spend their last cent to satisfy it. So there is where he will work the hardest. But there are none that can not give it up if they will rely wholly upon the arm of God's strength for help. He will never refuse to help; He is an ever-present help in time of trouble. He says: "Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool;" also, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean."

Estancia, N. M.