Basic HTML Version
New
Truth
About
Smoking
by
Jeff Calkins
Everybody now knows that smoking hurts the smoker. One government officia/ has called it "slow
motion suicide." Now new facts have come to /ight. Smoking does more harm than peop/e suppose!
I
s
THERE
a smoker anywhere
who doesn 't know smoking
causes him terrible physical
harm? Widespread health warn–
ings about smoking have caused
the proportion of smokers in the
population to go down. Smokers
in the U.S. now number around
35 percent. And yet these 35
percent remai n smokers even af–
ter all the warnings!
lt
seems that sorne people just
don ' t care about their health. The
temporary pleasure they get from
smoking is worth more to them
than the risk of heart attack, lung
cancer, bladder cancer or emphy–
sema.
Smoking is wrong because of
what it does to the smoker. lt
hurts him- and it reinforces
wrong traits of character. Years
ago, editor Herbert W . Arm–
st rong ' squarely confronted the
problem of smoking from the
standpoint of God's law:
" 1 then asked myself:
'Why
do
January 1981
1 smoke? rs it to express outgoi ng
!ove to God?' Most assuredly not!
'Am 1 smoking to express outgo–
ing !ove and concern for the wel–
fare of other humans? ' 1 had to
answer in the negative.' ' Thus he
concluded that smoking was "a
form of se/f-desire, breaking-at
least in sorne measure- the
Tenth Commandment!"
Now
it comes to light that
smoking breaks
not only
the
Tenth Commandment against
lust-it also breaks the Sixth
Commandment agai nst harming
your neighbor!
Scientific studies have now
revealed that smoking in the pres–
ence of others is an aggressive,
hostile, poisonous act!
lt
is literal–
ly
poisoning
someone else.
T he apostle Paul said t hat
"Love worketh no ill to his neigh–
bour" (Romans 13:1 0). As we
shall now see, smoking works
grievous ill
to its neighbor!
Nicotine , one of the more
harmful subs tances in tobacco
smoke, is used commercially as a
weed killer. Smokers have volun–
tarily chosen to expose their own
bodies to this poison. And yet,
according to the British medica!
journal
Lancet.
when 27 non–
smokers were shut in an unventi–
lated room with a group of heavy
smokers for a little more than an
hour, the nonsmokers picked up
significant amounts of nicotine in
their blood and urine.
A nonsmoker does not smoke
for a reason-he wants to remain
healthy. And yet when a non–
smoker has to breathe the cast-off
smoke of someone else's burning
cigarette, it is just the same as
smoking.
According to the World Health
Organization, a nonsmoker who
spends one hour in a smoke-filled
room inhales so much nicotine
and carbon monoxide (which pre–
vents the blood from receiving
oxygen) that it is just as if he had
31