TOBACCO SMOKING.

Temuka Leader, Issue 206, 4 December 1879, Page 3

TOBACCO SMOKING.

There ia a reason against public smoking—perhaps in effect against all smoking—which has scarcely received sufficient recognition. It is. the absolute indifference to the comfort and convenience of society at large'that it is certain to' produce: In this country there is still a small majority who do not like smoking nor its atmospheric products. - They do not like the smell of tobaccdj especially if it .be bad, which it generally is. They do not like having to breathe thesmclce ejected from the mouth of the smoker who has walked past them, or, perhaps, is standing by. They do not like to enter a room and find that habitual elookers have been there. When they attend our high Church Services, they feel the holiness of the surpliced procession somewhat marred if it reeks with tobacco smoke, which it very often does, from causes which the elder processionists can best explain. Almost as often as not, the first carriage you make for on a railway platform is found to be labelled ‘smoking,’ and when the next carriage is found to be labelled ‘engaged,’ nr ‘ ladies only,’ it sometimes ends in Tour having to put up with a class below what you paid for. Smokers monopolise far more than their share of our railway accommodation. Their exigency knows no limits. A smoker must have a compartment in which he enjoys the free exercise of his privilege, even if he have it all to himself and a dozen people are rushing about the platform, looking in rain fin- room —the. gnardfg whistle dread? sounding. What. v?. wu-*» } he of ten igms'cs ■ h ■ carnage prbvid&l #< for his s e*> au mod at ion, and looks aggr.crved

' if, asking whether you object to smoking you answer howt-v-i nr'ldly, that you do. Tobacco is a pou.rtn drug administered through the res; iratory organs, that is. 'through the atmosphere, as it weie, in common stock, the smoker administers his drug to all about him, whether they wish it oi‘ not* The indifference or apathy as regards the comforts of others is one of the most remarkable effects of tobacco. No other drug will produce anything like it. Neither opium nor intoxicating drink produce such an insensibility to his own true interest and his own dignity ; they make him foolish or violent; but they do not put him into such actual antagonism to the human race generally, as to make him to do constantly, openly, and with pleasure, what they very much dislike and believe to be hurtful. The opium-eater does not compel you to eat opium with him ; the drunkard doesn’t compel you to Irink The smoker compels you to smoke —nay. more, to breathe the smoke he has just discharged from his own mouth. It is true there is no malice in it. The Tobacco-smoker does not wish you harm when he puffs a cloud of nicotine into .your face, or expels you from the only available seat in a train just starting. He is in the happy state of the im- . mortal gods described by the Epicurean poet; he does not care whether you are happy or miserable, whether you are speeding on your journey, or blankly gazing after the vanishing train, or whether you really enjoy the unsought companionship of half a dozen men whom you can hear and smell, but cannot see. Now, anaesthesia may be a very great boon foi operations for toothache, ear-ache, or tic-doloureux ; but smokers may well ask whether it be good to have no part or lot in the pains of all, ' beyond their own precious happy selves. In Germany, howeve; the question is not ‘so much social as paternal. The state there undertakes education, above all, in its military aspect. Smoking is, believed to be ruinous to the constitution of the young. It weakens the powers of the stomach at that inq ortant crisis of our development when the largest qumtities of food .have to he assimilated to build up the growing frame. It lowers the vitality of the body, and affects the action of the heart. Muscle, energy, endurance, indeed all that make the man ami the soldier arc thus at stake. The youthful nature is -more., susceptible of such injurious influences, and the young may be said to make- or unmake themselves by their own habits. The German physicians appear to have arrived at the conslusion, no doubt on the proof of facts, that the young tobacco-smoker unmakes, and in a manner destroys himself, and intap nutates himself for the defence of his country. It cannot, how ever he denied that tobacco dees effect the brain, the heart, the circulation, and the temperature. By the effect produced in these quarters it gives the desired r ,.lief —a certain soothing ot the jaded or irritated norv s. ; .It substitutes a dreamy mood for one of flagging vitality. But these fits of suspended animation are 1 dearly purchased 5 they are the first step | of a horrible process. The poet who | described sleep as the cousin of death | might have found nearer relations and more direct approaches in the sudden abatement of sensation, memory, power and consciousness, we procure by drugs and other agencies. They all give us the first stage of that euthanasia which some have told us is within our right, and others tell us is a revolt against Nature and Heaven. But to practice day by day the way to death, even in its first smooth and easy stage, must facilitate the whole process and render it easy to die, by a sort of acquired proclivity, when other things.ineline that way., As the German example is now contagious we may possiblv have to enter on these questions, as they effect oiir young people and the public thoroughfares ; but if the controversy be once started, no man will see the end.