How to Get More Fun Out of Smoking - A Guide and Handbook for Better Smoking

CHAPTER I

TOBACCO AND THE SMOKER

WHY DO WE SMOKE? How much may we smoke with safety? Does smoking impair efficiency. Does it harm children? What are its advantages? What is smoking’s effect on the body? We’ve sought to answer these questions in this chapter. Later we’ll discuss tobacco from the economic, manufacturing and agricultural standpoints.

Debunking a few superstitions, that have never been proved:

That smoking stunts human growth.

That the pregnant mother’s smoking in moderation harms her child.

That tobacco affects the genitals in any way.

That use of tobacco causes loss of weight.

That so-called denicotinized tobaccos are free from nicotine.

That smoking causes cancer, tuberculosis, heart trouble, and numerous other diseases (although there are solid grounds for belief that smoking causes a predisposition toward some of these ailments).

That smoking facilitates creative work.

That smoking serves consistently either as a stimulant or as a depressant.

WHY SMOKE?

We find something like two-thirds of the people of this country smoking over a hundred billion cigarettes, and billions of cigars and packages of pipe tobacco. When we talk in billions we talk in tremendously large quantities, yet the industry in the United States grosses several billions of dollars a year in cigarettes alone.

Why?

Because people smoke.

Most of them don’t know why they do, and many wish they didn’t, but the fact remains that they do. A bunch of bogus theories have been advanced that smoking is an adult form of reverting back to the old thumb-sucking days, that it makes people feel grown up, that it is because of the type of seasoned food we eat, but these either fall because of the sheer weight of their own ridiculousness or through being disproved scientifically.

The majority of smokers are started because of social or anti-social reasons. That is, they hid away and tried it because smoking was forbidden them—they’re mimicking their elders, it makes them feel grown up—or else they found others in groups smoking and take up the filthy weed either to hop onto the bandwagon or in defense against being overwhelmed in smoke-filled rooms. Most of them have their first smoke before they are 18 years old.

These are their reasons for starting. They continue to smoke because they attribute to tobacco an emotional outlet for unfortunate breaks and uncomfortable circumstances. It serves as a combination drug, and activity, giving exercise to fidgety person’s senses of taste, touch, smell. It has a slight effect similar to rest at a time when the smoker can’t take time off for rest without great inconvenience. Smoking gives people an occupation when they would not otherwise be occupied. The pipe smoker fills, tamps, lights his pipe, takes it from his mouth every now and then, polishes it on his nose, rolls the smoke around his tongue, studies the smoke, maybe blows a few rings. Similarly the cigarette smoker deftly takes the fag from a package, tamps it expertly, lights it, toys with the smoke, flicks off ashes and finally tosses the butt away. And the cigar smoker unwraps his cigar, unbands it, bites off the end, lights it, chews the butt, possibly sets a peeling wrapper in place with a lick. Frequently these sets of action hold the smoker to his habit more strongly than does the drug in tobacco. There is also some ground for the belief that smoking staves off hunger temporarily.

Drug, habit, social reasons, fondness for certain flavors and aromas, activity—these are principal reasons for smoking.

Sometimes reluctance to becoming enslaved by a habit, or ill health, or desire to please someone who disapproves of smoking may cause a smoker to seek to drop his habit. Most of those who try to swear off are unsuccessful. Those who have succeeded found the best way was to drop it completely and find some other occupation to offset nervousness between smokes. Companionship in abstinence, forcing oneself to make a sacrifice for breaking the resolve and use of non-habit-forming substitutions for tobacco or nicotine are also sometimes helpful.

The smoker knows when he’s been overdoing his smoking. He doesn’t need a doctor or a book to tell him he’s been making a tobacco hog of himself. He’d derive marked moral satisfaction by applying brakes to his own foolishness rather than doing it on the suggestion of others.

—TEMPERANCE—NOT ABSTINENCE—

TOBACCO AND SMOKE CONTENT

There are many physical ailments attributed to tobacco. Before we look at them, let’s see what there is in tobacco that could cause this trouble.

Apologists for it would have us believe that nicotine is the only seriously dangerous drug in tobacco and that it is almost entirely dissipated in the burning action. They say tobacco contains cellulose, albuninoid, malic, citric, pectic and oxalic acids, resinous fats, ash and, incidentally, nicotine. The ash? Oh, it just contains such essential minerals as potash, lime, magnesia, phosphoric acid and a little other stuff.

Tobacco unburned is of interest primarily to the chewer and to a lesser degree to the cigar-smoker who uses no holder. Friends of tobacco have found carbonic acid gas, water, potash and ammonia salts, oils and resinous substances to be products of combustion.

Oils, resins and soot-laden water are the principal components of the goo left in pipe stems and filters or by blowing tobacco-smoke through a handkerchief. This is not nicotine as tobacco-haters sometimes assert. Nicotine is watery and transparent.

To take a few of the undertaker-callers found in tobacco and tobacco smoke by those who would have the weed wiped off earth’s face we have: pyridine, picoline, lutidine, collidine, parvoline, viridine, rubidine, and cori-dine, prussic and carbolic acids, carbon monoxide, five forms of nicotine and a few other items the druggist won’t sell without a prescription.

This school holds that there’s nothing nice about tobacco or tobacco smoke and the only harmless things in it are carbon dioxide and water. They lump the other poisons (apart from nicotine) together as tar derivatives and shake their heads solemnly and sadly at the thought of what they’ll do to the poor smoker. Dirty deposits of tar derivatives may contribute toward cancer’s progress, they say. Tar derivatives are liberated by the smoking; they may cause throat irritation. And ammonia, too, is liberated to help the tar derivatives in their dastardly work.

We’ve stuck to tobacco so far in this discussion, but remember that there are many other materials sometimes added to tobacco to give it flavor, aroma, uniformity or burning quality. Menthol is one; it doesn’t necessarily protect the throat and it may help irritate it, but it does make the smoke taste cooler. Others are lead and arsenic, but these are also taken into the system, in harmless quantities from eating fruit that has been sprayed and not thoroughly washed.

That’s a lot of poison for a person to have in his diet. Yet every year we hear of octogenarians or non-octogenarians who took on this poison throughout their lives and weren’t apparently harmed by it. We have a hunch that those smokers were intelligently moderate in their smoking and because of this they didn’t have to completely abstain as does the foolish smoker who overindulges for a few years and finds his health failing.

Let’s look more closely at nicotine. It’s the really dangerous element in tobacco because it is there in appreciable quantities, both pro- and anti-tobacco people agree. Nicotine is the material that distinguishes tobacco from all other plants. It constitutes from one to nine per cent of the tobacco. Nicotine content varies from brand to brand as you can tell by consulting the following chart. In general, European tobaccos have higher nicotine content, United States tobaccos have average amounts and Havana, Manila and Asiatic tobaccos contain least. The quantity of nicotine in tobacco bears no relationship to the quality of the tobacco—and this isn’t a plug for denicotinized tobaccos; there has yet to be found a good denicotinizing agent that leaves tobacco so that it remains Tobacco. Natural West Indian tobacco contains less nicotine than so-called denicotinized ones.

More irritating material, including nicotine, escapes from the smoldering tobacco into the air than is drawn into the system of the smoker. This sometimes makes it harder for the non-smoker to be present in the smoke-filled room than for the smoker. The smoker at least has the filter action of the pipe, cigar or cigarette to strain the smoke before it reaches him.

Rapid smoking causes absorption of more nicotine by the body than does slow smoking with steady intermittent puffs. Smokers who puff rapidly also inhale more carbon monoxide and aldehyde and an amount of nicotine equal to that which escapes into air; those who smoke normally and more slowly inhale less carbon monoxide, nicotine, ammonia, aldehyde and furfural than escapes into the air. In line with this, paradoxically, if you find your throat being irritated by tobacco, switch from Virginia and other mild blends, to slower-burning ones with richer flavor, say Turkish.

Thick cigars contain more nicotine than do thin ones.

The greater the moisture content of the tobacco, the more nicotine it contains.

Special toasting processes do not appreciably lower nicotine content of cigarette tobaccos.

Stubs of cigars and cigarettes and heels of pipes contain higher percentages of nicotine than the beginnings of the smokes; these also generate higher temperatured gases which irritate mucous membranes more readily.

Non-inhaling doesn’t keep you entirely divorced from the nicotine in tobacco. The pipe and cigar smoker gets a little more than half as much nicotine per ounce of tobacco as the cigarette smoker takes into his system. The nicotine is dissolved into the saliva and swallowed.

PERCENTAGE OF NICOTINE IN TOBACCO PRODUCTS:

CLASSIFICATION OF CIGARETTES BY

NICOTINE CONTENT:

a. Oriental (average nicotine content 1.44 per cent)

Abdullah

Benson & Hedges

Carmen

Cincinnati Club

Condax

Dimitrino

Egyptian Deities

Egyptian Straights

English Ovals

Haidee

Hassan

Lord Salisbury

Macedonia

Melachrino

Mile

Moguls

Murad

Natural

Nestor

Omar

Pall Mall

Phillip Morris

Rameses

Salome

Stephanos

Turkish Trophies

b. Blends (average nicotine content 1.90 per cent)

Barking Dog

Camel

Chesterfield

Clown

Dunhill

Fatima

Favorite

Home Run