Tag: smoking

Waving the fag

During World War I, the commander of US forces, General John J “Black Jack” Pershing, was asked what he needed to win the war. 

His reply: “You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco as much as bullets. Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons without delay.” 

For decades to come, the First World War proved instrumental in entrenching the popularity of cigarettes.  

British medical journal, ‘The Lancet’, expressed indifference at the time: “We may surely brush aside much prejudice against the use of tobacco when we consider what a source of comfort it is to the sailor and soldier engaged in a nerve-wracking campaign … tobacco must be a real solace and joy when he can find time for this well-earned indulgence”.

In 1917, the colourful inventor of corn flakes, John Harvey Kellogg, predicted that more American soldiers would be damaged by the cigarette than by German bullets. 

Almost 100 years later, on March 14, 2014, Jonathan Woodson, US assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, issued the following memorandum:

“Prominence of tobacco products in [military] retail outlets, and permission for smoking breaks while on duty, sustain the perception that we are not serious about reducing the use of tobacco”.

Smoking the Devil’s Trumpet

The idea of treating asthmatic attacks with smoke inhalation came to Britain from India in the 1800s. Indian asthmatics were pipe-smoking Angel’s Trumpets (Datura ferox) to relieve their symptoms. Word got back to the English physician, Dr Sims, who adopted the practice. When the Brit’s supply of Angel’s Trumpets was exhausted, they used Devil’s Trumpets (Datura stramonium) instead. Stramonium became the expert’s choice for treating asthma. At the time, tobacco, opium and cannabis were also gaining popularity as both therapeutic and recreational agents. Our famous Canadian physician, William Osler, extolled the benefits of medicated cigarettes in 1901.

As medical knowledge advanced and smoking fell into disfavour, stramonium and other medicated cigarettes (including menthol) were rebranded as a deterrent for smoking. For a brief time, the medical press supported medicated cigarettes to treat smoking addiction.

Further irony ensued after cigarettes were implicated in lung cancer.

Before the 1950s, no-one smoked filter-tipped cigarettes. Tobacco companies then tried to make cigarettes healthier by adding filters to block carcinogenic particles. Kent cigarettes decided asbestos would be a smart choice for a cigarette filter. Today, most laypeople will be able to tell you that asbestos causes lung cancer. Instead of making cigarettes safer, Kent was making them deadlier.

Inevitably, the downfall of medicated cigarettes was brought about by sociocultural factors, not a medical epiphany. In the late 1960s, the Canadian medical press reported that asthmatic teens were abusing their stramonium cigarettes and powders (Asthmador was a powder that was burned like incense to inhale its fumes).

Asthmatic kids were crushing, mixing and ingesting their prescribed treatment to get a hallucinogenic high. Some of them ended up in the hospital or dead. Stramonium is very similar to belladonna (deadly nightshade). Interestingly, Dr Sims, the first guy to write about smoking Datura for asthma in the medical press, apparently died of an overdose of belladonna.

Today, you can’t use your prescribed puffer to get high anymore, but inhaled treatments continue to be the cornerstone of asthma management.

Link: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844275/]