7-17-02, Voice in the Crowd
The Indians' Revenge
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
Now everyone knows smoking has its ill effects.
We are told that as a kid, often by a parent puffing on a cigarette.
Many, many years ago when I was a child, an older man took a deep puff
off his Chesterfield and blew the smoke through a white handkerchief.
He showed us the brown spot his breath had left.
“That’s what smoking does to your lungs,” he said,
and took another, deeper puff.
Now everyone agrees no sympathy is due those who smoke
knowing the consequences. I knew.
My father died with an oxygen tank beside his bed, suffering from
emphysema. I still lit one Pall
Mall after another—that is, until one day a year ago when I spent a miserable
Sunday coughing and trying to breathe. I
put them down and haven't lit one since.
At that point I could hardly walk up a flight of steps
without stopping for breath. With
the help of time and inhalers, I can at least get up the steps better, and
without an oxygen tank. In the back
of my mind I was sure eventually I would be carting around one of those little
canisters like my friend Tommy Markham. It
never occurred to me my wife might beat me to it.
After I stopped she continued. As much as I had enjoyed cigarettes, I didn’t complain when
I could smell the nicotine from the house as I came up the front steps.
I knew the addiction, knew it well.
And I knew how useless it is to try to get someone else to stop.
It’s an individual thing, a devil each must face in his or own way.
Ten days ago my wife went in for supposedly minor
surgery. It turned into a five-hour
ordeal with her losing 1800 ccs of blood. She
came home with an oxygen tank and the house now has an oxygen making machine in
the dining room with a plastic tube trailing her everywhere to supplement her
breathing. Two green canisters are
beside the front door for her to use when she has to go to the doctor.
There is hope that she may eventually get off the oxygen.
Who gets the blame for all of these smoke related health
problems?
The American Indian?
He introduced us to tobacco and Sir Walter Raleigh made it famous enough
to have his picture and name on a can of pipe tobacco.
Maybe the Indians knew moderation when he came to smoking.
Maybe his brand of home grown tobacco was not as addictive as modern
science has made it.
Is Madison Avenue and advertising to blame?
Not too many years ago smoking was fashionable.
Now Australia has even banned a video showing a man smoking in a movie. Besides, we are supposed to be intelligent enough not to be
suckered by the Winston Cup races or ads saying smoking is cool.
Blame the farmers?
I grew up on a tobacco farm and picked the leaves under a hot Virginia
summer sun, my hands, arms and clothes caked black with the tar from the leaves.
It was and is a cash crop that farmers find livelihood from.
What about blaming the manufacturers who market a
product so harmful, making us addicts as sure as if we’re hooked on heroin?
You can’t blame them for following the law.
Our legislators say they can make tobacco products and sell them to
adults, as long as they run a disclaimer telling us how harmful smoking is.
Now it comes down to blaming ourselves.
Adults should have the freedom to make their own choice.
To smoke or not to smoke. We
light up that cigarette knowing full well it’s not in the best interest of our
health. We deserve our share of the
blame.
But our own government deserves most of the blame.
They mishandle the problem from the day the tobacco seeds are planted to
the time when lung disease puts us in our graves.
They pay the farmer to grow or not grow the crop, and
support a price structure. More
importantly they let the cigarette manufacturers put any kind of addictive
substance in their tobacco that suits them.
Efforts to make them declare what’s in a cigarette are blocked by
legislators with their hands held out for contributions.
Even a cracker has to have label saying what’s in it.
But no one knows what a cigarette carries besides tobacco.
Whatever it is, the addictive agents are so powerful it takes guts to
quit.
The government’s handling of damages from tobacco
companies are even worse. They take
lump sums, distribute some to states and then tell ambulance chasing lawyers to
get what they can. A person is
rewarded for his stupidity in smoking not by his ailment but the wiles of his
lawyer. It would make more sense if
the assessment from tobacco went into curing lung cancer and respiratory
diseases with a level of aid to all sufferers.
In the end the Indians may be having the last laugh. Smallpox was called the white man’s curse as it decimated tribes. Tobacco with additives of addiction and greed are doing a pretty good job on the intruders to Pocahontas’ homeland.
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