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Question of the Day
Question:
"Dr. Hal, OK, I'm a smoker. Everybody's always down on me, demonizing me for my smoking so I feel like a jerk all the time. Do you know anything good I can tell them about tobacco, just to get them off my case? Like, Native Americans smoked it, right?"Answer:
Well, I'll be as fair as I can, but tobacco IS a demon, and you have to allow for that. They (demons) can be useful, but, mark well my words! are DANGEROUS, hard to control and should be treated with caution. As for feeling like a jerk, this is something that you, not I, Dr. Howland Owl, will have to deal with (in this context, at least). You weren't more specific about the form of smoke you enjoy. In this country there are 4 pipe smokers, 3 cigar smokers, 3 tobacco chewers and 1 snuff taker for every 17 cigarette smokers. Perhaps you smoke those clove cigarettes. Tobacco is a food; its leaves do contain a number of nutritional substances that can sustain life (for a time, if no other food is available). But, yes, it's hazardous if smoked, and every year 3 million Americans become cigarette smokers. As for the Native Americans, they originally smoked through the nose-- Indians fashioned a special pipe with a forked end, designed to fit into the nostrils. The smoke was then huffed through these ends by short, violent snorts. The name of this bifid pipe was a tubak-- and thus our word "tobacco." Later on came the "peace pipe," smoked between friends and enemies out of the context of war. But it should remember that some of these were also ceremonial hatchets-- they had blades which could be sunk into an enemy's skull if things grew less "peaceful." In my view, there are other, less harmful vices, and less expensive ones. Remember, if you inhale one and a half packs per day you smoke 10,950 cigs a year. A heavy smoker goes through 30,000-40,000 a year. Why not save the money? And, a person who smokes a pack a day inhales a half-cup of tar each year-- eeeww! My final take on the subject is that tobacco is a drug, so naturally I wouldn't want to forbid its use. But proper drug use is a skill, an art. To use drugs carelessly is to surrender power to them.
Askdrhal.com by
Jascha Ephraim,
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