Tobacco

 Tobacco

I remember my first cigarette. I was on a day trip to Blackpool with the Youth club. The coach stopped at a pub so that we could buy pop and crisps. We weren't old enough to drink. I was 15 as was my friend who had acquired some cigarettes. She gave me one. We both lit up and I told myself that I would not inhale. However rushing back to the coach which was about to leave I had to jump over a puddle and I took a big intake of breath and smoke. It wasn't pleasant. It felt sharp on the back of my throat and it made me I leaf dizzy.

I can't remember my second or third cigarette. I can't even remember becoming a regular smoker after that first one. All the adverts at the time urged and encourage everyone to smoke no matter how much the costs went up after every budget. Of course once begun it was difficult to give up such a powerful addiction. It was socially acceptable. It seemed that everyone smoked- parents, neighbours even film stars and TV personalities. We could smoke anywhere and everywhere, in pubs in cafes and cinemas. We viewed the screen through a smoke filled theatre.

We were surrounded by bill boards telling us that we 'were never alone with a strand'. Craven A started using the slogan "For Your Throat's Sake" around 1939. It had a famous slogan, "Will Not Affect Your Throat". Many advertising posters were made to promote Craven 'A' cigarettes.

Cigarettes were heavily taxed. The government knew in the early 40's about smoking and cancer but the tobacco lobby was very powerful and the government did exceeding well out of the purchase tax which was raised at every budget.

My first few days at college were lecture free and we students were left to get to know each other and the college geography and I suppose leisure possibilities. The girls on my floor all collected together in one room and talked. Talked and smoked. We all smoked. We smoked Gallois which were very strong. And we smoked a lot in those first few days.

After college when I was married I continued to smoke and so did my husband. He chained smoked. He gave me his wages and I bought his cigarettes for the week, 10 packs of 20. That was 200 in a week. He did smoke at least 20 a day. I must have smoked the rest. If I ever suggested to him that he should stop he flew into a rage. So I realised that he couldn't even consider giving up. He died of lung cancer.

I did manage to stop. I learned TM and my teacher told me not to try to stop smoking, not to even think about it. It would just happen, and it did. I was sitting with my feet in the oven, I was living in a freezing cold flat, I was coughing, and rolling a cigarette. I was on the dole and money was short. I thought,'What are you doing to yourself ?' I threw the tobacco and papers in the bin and I have never smoked since. That was over 40 years ago.

Lung cancer was once a very rare disease, so rare that doctors took special notice when confronted with a case, thinking it a once-in-a-lifetime oddity. Mechanisation and mass marketing towards the end of the 19th century popularised the cigarette habit, however, it caused a global lung cancer epidemic. Cigarettes were recognised as the cause of the epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s, Cigarette manufacturers disputed this evidence, as part of an orchestrated conspiracy to salvage cigarette sales. Propagandising the public proved successful. As late as 1960 only one-third of all US doctors believed that the case against cigarettes had been established.

The cigarette is the deadliest artefact in the history of human civilisation.

Cigarettes cause about 1 lung cancer death per 3 or 4 million smoked, which explains why the scale of the epidemic is so large today. Cigarettes cause about 1.5 million deaths from lung cancer per year, a number that will rise to nearly 2 million per year by the 2020s or 2030s, even if consumption rates decline in the interim. Part of the ease of cigarette manufacturing stems from the ubiquity of high-speed cigarette making machines, which crank out 20 000 cigarettes per min.

Cigarette makers make about a penny in profit for every cigarette sold, which means that the value of a life to a cigarette maker is 10, 000 US dollars .