TOBACCO AND YOU

Vance Ferrell

WHY QUIT—NON—MEDICAL REASONS

Well, we always think first of money when it comes to most everything else, so let's start with one here. It is not likely that someone gives you a year's supply of cigarettes every Christmas, so what is it costing you?

When I was in high school, the students spent twenty cents a pack for cigarettes. Back in those days, even cigars didn't cost much. But now, de­pending on local taxes, the cost of maintaining this habit , can really eat into your budget. In our area, they cost $1.10 (NOW ABOUT $7.) a pack at this time. With such prices, it is not difficult to go through a lot of money every month.

Americans are spending an average of $22 billion a year on cigarettes. No, I did not say "million," I said "billion." And it is even more than that, if the total were to include cigars, snuff, and pipe tobacco.

At the above rate, a two-pack-a-day-man spends $15.40 a week, or $66 a month, or $803 a year to smoke. To the well-to-do, that is not too much. But for the rest of us, it is a bite in any man's wallet.

Yet this is only the beginning. It also takes matches or cigarette lighters, ashtrays, and cigarette boxes. Or it may involve the expense of humidors, pipes and pipe racks, tobacco pouches, pipe cleaners and scrapers, cigarette holders, and often filters for them.

For there is not only the cost of all this, but the bother of keeping track of it: where it is when you need it, resupply and replacement costs, and all the rest. No longer will you ruin your best suits or dresses with burns from falling embers. Your furniture and rugs will remain in better condition. And you will be safer also. Many fires are started by smoking in bed. My father owned two rooming houses, but none of us could ever get him out-of­town overnight. He was afraid to leave, lest someone go to sleep with a cigarette and he lose his houses. Finally, one night that which he had expected occurred: one of the boarders fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. But quick work restricted the damage to only one room.

Perhaps you may think he was worrying too much (he himself didn't smoke). People with burning cigarettes need to worry more. Fires caused by cigarettes, or from thrown matches used to light tobacco, is responsible for many fires in America. The present writer worked for a time as an assistant fire under­writer. The insurance companies maintain that a third of all U.S. fires are caused by smoking.

Smoker or non-smoker, you help finance all those fires in the annual insurance premiums you pay. The entire nation would save on fire losses and insurance costs if more people would stop smoking.

But there are more non-medical factors involved in smoking:

If you are in the habit of smoking thirty cigar­ettes a day, you will add half an hour to every day of your life. "Yes," you might reply, "those coffin nails do shorten my life!" That is true, but this is the non­-medical chapter; we're not talking about that. The point here is that—believe it or not—every time you smoke a cigarette, it takes a trifle over one minute. That is not the time spent in smoking it, but only the fumbling one cigarette out of the package, getting out the match or lighter and lighting it up, once or twice putting down the cigarette and taking it up for more puffs, and then the final snuffing out. Okay, so you don't believe it: time it yourself and you will see that it is true.

About fifteen years ago I stopped by a me­chanic's shop to have something spot-welded. With nothing else to do, I stood there as an experienced welder set to work. He wasn't the type to talk much, so I just watched. First, he lit up a cigarette. Either so many minutes had passed and it was time for another one, or he needed it in order to get through the spot welding; which I will never know.

Since he didn't need an arc weld for this one, he broke out the oxyacetylene rig and began to set it up and move it where he wanted it. In order to do this, he needed both hands, so he put the cigarette in his mouth. But doing that was no help since the smoke lazily flummed up directly into his eyes. He tried to minimize the hot, acrid fumes by squinting his eyes. But that didn't seem to solve the problem, for the smoke was too irritating. Getting nowhere, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and, being right-handed, put it in his most dexterous hand-his right one. Now he could get the rig ready for the weld. But now he only had one hand to do it with. Yet this seemed to be a way of life he was used to, for he made the best of it and pretty much did most of what was needed with one hand. When the going got tough, he would put the cigarette back in his mouth for several seconds and get to work with both hands. But that could not last long, because his eyes were being smoked again. It was either two hands and a vision problem, or one hand and clear-sightedness. Of course, he could have stopped, to smoke the cigarette through, but that's a poor way to spend the day: standing around smoking cigarettes instead of getting the work done.

So if you stop smoking, you will get your right hand back. . and no more smoke in your eyes. This may seem like a little thing, but when you live with it day after day. . well, perhaps it's a pretty big thing. You only have so many years; why not make them pleasant?

Here's some more:

When you give up smoking, your teeth will start looking cleaner—because they are cleaner,—and that yellow stain on your fingers will disappear in a few days or a week. When you get up in the morning, the inside of your mouth will not taste like a workman's glove.

And more, you won't have that ever-increasing cough. If you're only occasionally coughing now, just think of what is ahead: that cough will become more and more raw and hacked with the passing of the years. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning you will feel like you are going to choke to death on the phlegm coming up. This is because the delicate hairs, or cilia inside the throat and bronchials continually waive unwanted "throw-away" substances back up into the mouth. But a cilia in a smoker's respiratory tract is gradually damaged so that the phlegm comes up when he arises in the morning. Eventually, as the smoking continues, the small hair-like cilia will stop working entirely. When that happens, the choking lessens—for the dust, coal tar, and waste products are collecting in the lungs.

Did you know that food can taste really good? Not if you have been smoking for awhile. Drop cigarettes and the delicate flavor of food can again be yours. No longer will you be flooding your taste buds with some six to eight hundred mouthfuls of harsh, acrid smoke each day.

And that is more smoke than many professional firemen encounter in a year's time. What does life smell like? When you walk into a garden you will begin smelling it, instead of just seeing it—as best as you can see it through the smoke of your latest cigarette. As soon as you step in the door in the evening you will be able to smell what your thoughtful wife has prepared you for supper.

No more ashes all over your papers, vest, and the tablecloth. And something else,—your nervousness will subside! Here all this time you imagined that smoking reduced nervousness. It did—for about 2 ½ to 3 min­utes. But quitting the smokes entirely will reduce ner­vousness all the time. Now, really, that should be worth the trouble of stopping tobacco, —for "getting rid of nervousness" is a frequently—given reason for continuing with them with them.

Ask someone who has stopped smoking how it affected him. He will tell you that he has more energy now than before. Did you know that no smoker ever wins a long—distance foot race? That is because smoking heavily reduces physical endurance. Both facts are well known.

Feeling so much better, you will find that you have more time to do the things you want to do. Life can be so much more enjoyable when you are living healthfully.

Somewhere here, we should bring up a matter that some folk worry about: "If I stop, will I gain weight?"

Yes, you may gain a little weight when you stop. But in most cases, this will not be more than a few pounds. Seriously, now, which is more important: keeping off a few pounds -Or getting away from tobacco? All the facts, details; and collected misery that you live with today and face in the future over tobacco; well, really,—far better accept a few pounds than to keep inhaling the "yellow death."

When you stop smoking, your energy level will increase—strikingly so. And that energy will drive you to getting more things done. It is fun to work and accomplish things, and with the new fund of energy, you will hardly be able to keep yourself back from daily using it up on things you want to and like to do. In so doing, you will tend to burn away much of the pounds that you have added.

But face it: tobacco has to stop, no matter what! That's all there is to it! You must become serious about it. Most Americans that keep at the smokes for several decades live with a miserable present and face a terrible future. The answer is obvious: Figure out some other ways to lower weight (and there are other ways—we list some in a chapter near the end of this book), but don't use tobacco to do it! Here are yet more advantages of quitting: You won't have to pat your pockets every time you go anywhere, to make sure you are carrying your little god around with you. No more early or late trips to the comer store for another pack, or for the matches to light it.

Speaking of matches: Don't you get tired of bumming matches off people because you ran out? No more carrying ashtrays around with you, or looking for one, or emptying one, or apologizing when your ashes don't land in one. And no more having to keep alert to maintaining the routine of continually tipping ashes into one,—so they don't fall on you, the desk, the floor, or someone else.

You will not have to interrupt meetings by going out for a smoke. No more loose fibers of tobacco in your pockets or purse. No more bulging pack or pouch in your pocket for your children to keep look­ing at . . and wonder wistfully how soon they can be old enough to be like Dad—and carry a bulging pack around in their pocket also.

You can go to sleep at night knowing that, at last, you are giving a right example to your little ones; you have thrown the stuff away and will have nothing more to do with it. And they know it, and are already beginning to rethink what they are going to decide about tobacco later on.

One man told me, "I'd give anything if my boy would never get into this stuff later!" He pointed to the cigarette in his hand.

Above everything else, when you stop using tobacco, you free yourself at last from a deadly compulsion that is slowly killing you off. You are parting company with a slow poison that formerly had a powerful grip on you. You will be able to walk by tobacco shops and know that there is nothing inside them for you.

You have just read a chapter that has told you stacks of advantages to quitting. But there is more to it than that,—much more.

Most of that which was discussed in this chapter dealt with nuisance or convenience aspects. But there is more to it than that. Death or life are in the taking up or laying down of a cigarette.

Do you believe it? Read the next chapter for convincing evidence.

WHY QUIT 2 —MEDICAL REASONS

It was the summer of 1954, and I was in San Francisco taking coursework that would enable me to complete college the next year. One morning, just off Market Street, I walked by the Civic Center Conven­tion Hall—and discovered that the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association was in session. Inside I found the entire hall filled with medical exhibits of various kinds. One was a twice—size plastic model of a human being, showing blood vessels, nerves, and organs beneath the transparent skin. Another key exhibit was a display in honor of Dr. Albert Schwitzer, "physician of the year."

Yet among the dozens of exhibits, the most interesting was one that few stopped to look at. It was as if no one had called their attention to it. This exhibit, of photographs and papers mounted on the wall, told about pioneer research by Drs. Evarts Gra­ham and Ernest Wynder into lung cancer. Their recently-completed findings showed a clear link be­tween cigarette smoking and that rapidly-increasing disease that was causing the death of large numbers yearly.

The next day, all America became interested in that research, for it was at that time that the Gra­ham-Wynders research was publicly reported on the floor of the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association. Immediately the news media caught the story and sent it around the world. It quickly became the medical news sensation of the decade.

The rest is history. The AMA immediately voted to ban tobacco ads from their influential "Journal," and extensive new tobacco research projects were launched that would ultimately reveal many other dangers of using tobacco.

This chapter will explain that —for you —quitting tobacco is a matter of life and death:

 THE POISONS IN TOBACCO

Let us first examine the contents of a cigar­ette: Tobacco leaves have very complex chemicals in them—over 3,000. When tobacco is chewed, these chemicals go directly into the body; when smoked, the only chemicals that are not taken into the body­ are those that have been changed or combined by burning into new chemical combinations. And once inside you, the physical weakening and disease begins. Remember, that when it comes to tobacco, you always lose and the tobacco industry always gains. Unless, of course, you say goodbye to the whole thing. Smoke is a mixture of chemical gases and very small particles of solid chemicals. Oxygen combines with the original substance and converts it into other chemical compounds.

Nicotine (named after Jean Nicot, who first introduced it to France in 1559) is one of the most powerful poisons in tobacco. But there are many others, including such things as arsenic, carbon monoxide (the highly-dangerous automobile exhaust gas), ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, and other hydrocarbons. Some volatile acids, such as formic acid, acetic acid, and benzoic acid, are also included. The aldehydes in tobacco are also highly irritating. It is the poisonous chemicals combined with these acids and aldehydes that irritate your throat as you smoke. But those "great American chemical factories"—cigarettes, pipe tobacco, and snuff,—do more than irritate your throat; they cause trouble to your lip, mouth, bronchial passages, lungs, internal organs, and brain.

One of these 3,000 chemicals is benzopyrene, one of several proven cancer irritants in tobacco smoke. Then there is the arsenic. Arsenic is not natural to tobacco; it arrived there through insecticides, but for some reason tobacco farmers are applying much more arsenic to their crops than twenty years ago.

And, of course, there is nicotine. This is the principal alkaloid found in tobacco. It stands near the top of the list for its powerful-and bad-effects on the human body. Any experienced gardener will tell you that nicotine is one of the best bug killers. This is because nicotine is one of the most powerful poi­sons known to mankind.

There is a surprisingly large amount of nicotine in tobacco; it averages about 2 percent. The tobacco in an average cigarette weighs about one gram. Therefore an average cigarette contains about twenty milligrams of nicotine. The 440 billion cigarettes consumed each year in the United States contain about 2.2 million gallons of nicotine. This chemical is so poisonous — that only fifty milligrams of it, injected into a vein, will kill a person. That is the amount of nicotine in two-and-a-half cigarettes. All the cigarettes used each year in America contain enough nicotine to provide 176 billion lethal doses! And that is enough to kill, through single doses by vein,—one thousand times as many people as live in the United States.

It is of interest that only part of the nicotine in each cigarette is in the "main-stream" smoke that enters the body of the smoker; much of that nicotine goes into "side-stream" smoke —and is inhaled by your family, children, and everybody else that is near­by as you smoke your cigarette!

About 90 percent of the nicotine in the "main­stream" smoke you inhale—is absorbed into your body.

Tar is another problem, but what is it? There is no tar in tobacco. Only as it is burned is tar formed. It is a recombination of some of the chemicals. Tar is a dark, sticky substance that collects on the walls of your lungs as you smoke. Dr. A.C. Hilding of the Re­search Laboratory of St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, discovered that when a smoker inhales and holds his breath for only ten seconds,—the smoke will be colorless when it comes out. After extensive work on this, he determined that, normally, one-half of the tar in the smoke you inhale —is deposited on the surface of your lungs!

FACTS ABOUT THE SPECIAL CIGARETTES

While we are on the topic of nicotine, we should mention that "denicotinized" cigarettes (which, on the label, say "less than 1 percent nico­tine") have about one-half as much nicotine as regu­lar cigarettes, but just as much of the other poisons. The tendency is for people to increase the amount they smoke of the "denicotinized" packs, thereby obtaining about as much nicotine as before.

"Low-nicotine" cigarettes, use varieties of to­bacco containing less nicotine. But it has been found that each "low-nicotine" cigarette produces more tar than usual. So less nicotine and more tar.

King-size (extra long) cigarettes are supposed to be safer because they provide a longer distance for the nicotine and other poisons to travel before being inhaled. But who half—smokes a cigarette and then throws the other half away? Research by the AMA Chemical Laboratory revealed that a half-smoked king-size yields slightly less poisons than usual, but a fully-smoked one-is far higher in its output of nicotine and tar.

Filter-tip cigarettes, on the other hand, were de­clared by a House of Representatives subcommittee in February 1958 —to only add to the problem! The report said that instead of quitting, people switch to filter-tips, thinking that these will protect their health, when in reality they are still smoking cigarettes, still inhaling poisons, and still sharing poisons in the "side-stream" to those around them. The facts are, that it has been shown that the chemicals and tar that gives the "taste" to cigarettes. Therefore only just enough is filtered out so that sales will not be jeopardized. By producing a filtered cigarette that still has taste, the cigarette manufacturers have canceled out the advantage of the filter. The manufacturers have shifted to stronger blends of tobacco containing higher contents of nicotine and tar for their filter cigarettes. Then they can advertise that they have filtered out 30 to 40 percent of the smoke, yet the taste remains about the same, and the chemical and tar in­haled from a filter cigarette is comparable to that of regular cigarettes.

"Sales of filter-tips zoomed with the controversy over a link between lung cancer and smoking. At first, says the committee, tips did cut down on tars and nicotine, but, to satisfy smokers' tastes, manufac­turers then 'loosened' filters and switched to stronger, coarser tobaccos. As a result, the committee says, smokers now get more tars in filter-tips than in the regular cigarettes they switched from."—U.S. News & World Report, February 28, 1958.

CANCER

We have reached the 365,000 mark in America. That means that—day after day, every day in the year —1,000 people die of cancer. And 365,000 annual deaths from cancer means that more people die of that dread disease in our nation every year—than died in the entire Viet Nam War! Nearly eight times more! A lot of tobacco research has been done since Graham and Wynder reported their findings to the AMA in 1954. It is now known that smokers significantly increase their chances of contracting many different types of diseases—and dying from them.

Did you know that cigarette smokers die at a 70 percent faster rate than nonsmokers? Think about that a moment. There is no doubt that your decision to read this book and move out from tobacco—may be one of the most important decisions of your life. Did you know that stomach cancer occurs twice as frequently in smokers as in nonsmokers? And then there is cancer of the lower part of the large bowel; it is the most common internal cancer and clearly afflicts smokers more frequently than nonsmokers. These are facts that should sober any smoker.

Then there is cancer of 'the throat. This is a living horror that no one wants. Corrective surgery for this problem often removes the vocal cords. If you lose your vocal cords, you must learn to speak by "regurgitating swallowed air"! 80 percent of all inci­dents of cancer of the throat occur in cigarette smokers. It is the irritating effect of the various chemicals in the smoke that induces this form of cancer.

The advertisers talk about "cigarette country" with its he-man cowboys, lariats, and all the rest. But cigarette country is leading a lot of people to cancer country,—for if you smoke, your chances of dying from some form of cancer are 110 percent greater than that of those who have never smoked on a regular basis!

LUNG CANCER

Well, we haven't come to the back part of this book yet—the part that tells you how to quit smok­ing. So you may be taking a deep drag on a cigarette as you read these words. Every time you inhale that smoke, it is plunged deep into each corner—every remotest part—of your lungs. Thus, tar, nicotine, and many chemical compounds are taken into your lungs, and from there go to other parts of your body. The tar, itself, is primarily deposited on the inside surface of the lung. And it IS tar! It is black, sticky, and tar­like.

Ordinarily, cilia (small, waving, hairlike structures) in your respiratory tract try to brush dust and dirt back up into your throat so you can spit it out. But the tar immobilizes the cilia, eventually destroying them.

As the tar builds up, the surface of the lung changes in appearance and more cells are formed. Eventually, cancer cells begin forming. This is the way it begins. But it does not end there. The cancer cells in the lung enter the blood and lymphatic vessels and spread to other parts of the body.

Unfortunately, by the time a positive diagnosis confirms the presence of lung cancer—the disease is out of control and spreading.

People may talk about the "spectacular advances in medical science," but they are not able to solve the lung cancer problem. This is because the solution is to stop smoking!

So, by way of summary, think about these two facts—and, having read them, determine that you are going to read this book all the way to the end, and do what it says:

(1) 90 percent of those who contract lung cancer die of it, and (2) If you smoke, your chances of dying from lung cancer are 700 times greater than that of non-smokers or those who have never smoked on a regular basis.

EMPHYSEMA

Emphysema is a big word, but it is bad news to those that get it. Emphysema occurs when the surface cells of the lungs begin to grow abnormally. They do this because too many irritating substances have been deposited on them. As this growth continues, these added cells begin to block the very small air tubes inside the lung. But it is the purpose of these tubes to exchange body air with the outside air that has just arrived, fresh, into the lung. Because these tubes are increasingly becoming blocked, you feel as if you are drowning! Your carbon dioxide cannot get out, and fresh, oxygen-filled air cannot get in. But the condition keeps getting worse. Tobacco chemicals in the lung weaken the air sacs, which then break open and make larger balloonlike sacks, called "blebs."

Would you like to have constant shortness of breath, lack of energy, inability to carryon your work properly, and an increasing drowning sensation? If so, just keep smoking and emphysema may be a special gift to you before long.

More than a million Americans now have em­physema, and 15,000 die every year because of it. A major problem is that if you acquire emphysema, and then stop smoking,—your lungs may work better, but the broken air-sac walls will never heal to normality. How shall we summarize this terrible problem?

In just one sentence: If you smoke, your chances of dying from emphysema are about 10 times greater than those who have never smoked at all or have never smoked on a regular basis.

HARDENING OF THE ARTERIES

We have all heard of hardening of the arteries, and we know that it can have a number of causes­ but did you know that tobacco is one of the biggest?

More people die of hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) and other cardiovascular diseases, than any other single cause of death in our nation. This amounts to about 50 percent of all deaths.

Extensive scientific research has shown that a high-fat diet is a major culprit here,—and that nicotine is another one. For some reason, nicotine speeds up the buildup of fatty deposits on the inner walls of your arteries. But more: Nicotine also causes the ar­teries to narrow, or constrict! This double-whammy effect means that if any of your friends want to stick with tobacco, they might as well begin thinking about where they wish to be buried.

The arterial fat buildup, combined with arterial shrinkage, makes it more difficult for the blood vessels to carry urgently-needed blood throughout your body. This shortage of blood especially shows up in the heart, brain, other organs, and extremities. Tissue damage from lack of fresh blood results, but don't worry about that,—for the big problem is the greatly increased likelihood of a small blood clot at some point in those clogged arteries. A heart attack or stroke immediately occurs.

Really, is tobacco chewing, cigarette smoking, and pipe smoking really worth all this danger? Okay, let's summarize this one: Tobacco can increase your chances of dying from heart disease by 103 percent, over those who leave it alone!

EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN AND NERVES

There is no one who would not agree as to the importance of his brain. But research is now revealing that tobacco can bring injury to delicate brain tissue, and even produce brain damage.

Tobacco slows mental activity and reflex responses. At first it does this temporarily, but a gra­dual buildup effect eventually develops. Earp and Clark did research studies on college students—and found that only 18.3 percent of the smokers received academic honors, while 68.5 percent of the non­smokers did. Bush, another research clinician, found that a 10.5 percent drop in mental efficiency occurred following smoking.

Experiments conducted at George Williams College revealed that unsteadiness of the hand increased as much as 100 percent after smoking just two cigar­ettes. Calm you down? No, they make you more ner­vous!

In order to function properly, the brain must have an adequate supply of blood with its nutrients and oxygen. A major cause of brain damage, through strokes or apoplectic seizures, is cholesterol buildup in the arteries. Strokes result from blood clots on the roughened surface of blood vessels, or from brain hemorrhages from these vessels. Either of these con­ditions stops blood flow to a portion of the brain, and produces loss of speech, partial or total paralysis, or death.

But this cholesterol buildup can also bring on senility through brain tissue starvation. It is now known that this cholesterol buildup has two primary causes: improper diet (eating animal fat or certain vegetable oils, especially the hardened ones) and tobacco. Nicotine has the strange property of speeding up the laying down of cholesterol on the walls of veins and arteries.

We all know that carbon monoxide can be a killer. This is due to the fact that it replaces oxygen in the body. Cigarette smoke contains 1-2% percent carbon monoxide. Experiments show that the smoking of only one pack within a seven—hour period results in a 5 to 10 percent carbon monoxide saturation of the blood! This reduces the amount of avail­able oxygen within the body, and hinders muscle action and mental function.

The problem here is that blood hemoglobin is the carrier of oxygen to the entire body, and when­ever it is given a preference, it will always link up with carbon monoxide instead of oxygen.

HEART ACTION AND PHYSICAL ENDURANCE

 Knute Rockne, the well—known football coach, said this: "Tobacco slows up reflexes, lowers morale; any advertising that says smoking helps an athlete is a falsehood and a fraud."

TyCobb, a leading base­ball player of yesteryear added: "Cigarette smoking stupefies the brain, saps vitality, undermines health and weakens moral fiber. No one who hopes to be successful in any line can afford to contract so detri­mental a habit."

Muscles work because nerve impulses tell them to do so. But the use of tobacco weakens those nerve impulses. And carbon monoxide and other tobacco poisons in the blood stream weaken the muscle itself. Slower reaction time and weaker muscles; this is the conclusion of scientific studies on the relation of tobacco to physical endurance. '

The recently-developed ballistocardiograph has established that after smoking a single cigarette, many individuals undergo a temporary change in heart function. The cause was nicotine. The amount of change increases with age, and is most often found among people with coronary artery disease. This is an ominous warning to anyone who uses tobacco.

Dr. Walter Bastedo, a well—known pharmoco­logist, sums it up this way: "At the time of smoking there is a lowered cardiac efficiency, with diminished power of the heart to stand strain, and in some cases there are premature beats. In the young adult re­covery from this state is prompt. The continued use of tobacco sometimes results in a chronically lowered cardiac efficiency, in over—rapid pulse, in palpitation, and in subjective discomfort about the heart, or in disturbance of rhythm."

So, let us say it again: Nicotine weakens nerve impulses to the muscles; carbon monoxide and other tobacco poisons in the blood bring on muscle tissue weakness; Nicotine reduces heart rhythm, efficiency, and strength.

SMOKING AND PREGNANCY

Studies in Germany among women workers in tobacco factories show more abortions and a greater infant mortality rate (while their babies are between one and three years of age). Miscarriages were also significantly higher among such workers. Similar studies in Brazil indicated that abortions and still­births were double the normal rate.

In animal experimentation, the offspring of fe­male rabbits exposed to cigarette smoke were smaller at birth by 17 percent; the stillbirth rate was 10 times higher; the mortality rate was much higher.

Dr. M.F. Ashley Montagu, one of America's lead­ing physicians, says this: "There can be no question that consistent smoking places a very dangerous strain on the heart and other connected organs. There is not the least doubt that smoking mothers are responsible for the increase in cardiac trouble." He bases his conclusion on the fact that a single puff of cigarette smoke inhaled by a pregnant woman has been shown to increase the heart beat of a seven-month fetus from 140 to 179 times a minute!

Three-year research of 7,499 hospital patients by Dr. W.J. Simpson, of the San Bernardino (Califor­nia) County Health Department, clearly proved that the number of premature births is twice as great for smoking mothers than for non—smoking mothers.

OTHER SIGNIFICANT EFFECTS

There is not adequate space to describe the many other effects that science has traced to the use of tobacco. But here are a few samples: It is now known that the poisons or tars from chewing or smoking tobacco strangely speed up body metabolism and pulse rate. This puts the entire body on emergency status, as the heart works faster and fuel is burned up more rapidly. The body, and especially the heart, are being worn out more quickly.

There is a very definite and, for some, a very dangerous —increase in the blood pressure. For ex­ample, a person who has a high blood pressure of 190, and then smokes one or two cigarettes —will have and increase of blood pressure to as much as 240!

Smoking greatly aggravates asthma. So much so, that a Mayo Clinic report disclosed that "the best possible regimen for the relief of chronic asthma may fail if the patient is allowed to continue smoking." We will not take time here to explain why this is so.

Smoking hurts the eyes. Continual irritation from the smoke has long-term effects that are not good. In addition, some smokers contract "tobacco amblyopia," which blurs vision and color identification at the center of visual focus. A similar-but dif­ferent-form of amblyopia is caused by drinking al­coholic beverages.

Smoking affects the ability of the nose to detect and identify odor. The sense of smell is decidedly weakened. Continual irritation of the nose by tobacco smoke also brings on a "postnasal drip" which is so common among smokers, especially on wakening in the morning.

And there is the chronic cough that smokers de­velop. This cough, which exists in about 80 percent of smokers, is actually dangerous for it damages lung tissue and, in many persons, causes a rupture of the walls of the minute air sacs of the lungs. What you are here reading is the beginnings of emphysema, a condition relatively rare in non-smokers. But once estab­lished, emphysema brings chronic invalidism. And who wants a future like that?

Smoking increases stomach acid and leads to peptic (stomach) ulcers. This relationship has been well established, both by research and by clinical studies. And the same holds true for duodenal ulcers, as well.

SHORTENING YOUR LIFE

Several studies have been done on the relation­ship of tobacco to longevity, or length of life. In 1938, Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns Hopkins University, working with the records of 6,813 males be­tween 30 and 95 years of age, found that the smokers lived shorter lives than non—smokers. Here are a couple of examples from this study: At age 45, non­smokers have a death rate of 12.04 deaths per thou­sand individuals. For heavy smokers, it is 25.69 per thousand. Thus, at 45 years of age, there are twice as many deaths by the heavy smokers. Comparing those who use tobacco with those who do not: A person of 30 years of age will live, on the average, ten-and-a-half years longer than a heavy smoker, aged 30.

Drs. Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill did re­search in England on 34,497 male physicians, aged 35 and above. Over a period of nearly four-and-a-half years, 1,714 deaths occurred among these 34,497 individuals. The smokers died off much faster than the non—smokers.

187,783 men between the ages of 50 and 69 were checked over a 44-month period by Drs. Ham­mond and Horn. The number of deaths among the regular cigarette smokers was 1,783 more than the corresponding non-smokers. In those forty-four months, 1,644 non-smokers died, and 4,406 cigarette smokers died. Their statistics were also broken down by number of packs smoked per day. It was obvious that the death rates increased with the number of cigarettes smoked per day.

Dr. Harold F. Dom studied 200,000 military veterans, and found that the death rate among all types of cigarette smokers was 58 percent higher than among non-smokers.

CONTINUE PART 3