Smoking
Malignant objectors
Thomas W. Gadd
Among smokers in general it is consensus that — maugre the shrill protests of the killjoy • banshees — smoking, with some self-control by the smoker, is a pleasurable and satisfying indulgence. I think it is also a healthy habit — healthy meaning wholesome. Just as the body-mass requires conventional food, and the mind requires its kind of food, and the spirit its own peculiar sustenance there is probably some other component of the human system — the nervous 'body' perhaps — which also needs an assimilable kind of 'food' and gratification.
It seems to me that gasified tobacco can supply this: perhaps be a benefit to the whole system. Certainly the human race, by and large, has taken quite happily to it — because, I think, men in general instinctively feel it is beneficial. Smoking does help people to get along. The cranks say that this is only imagination, or self-suggestion: even so, it still helps people to get along. When it comes to the push the cranks can only offer, in apposition to such a happy self-suggesting, and in substitution for it, various kinds of (verbally wrapped up) realistic misery. But if some people don't smoke or have given it up .1 would never persuade them to start or resume. I am not prescribing it, only defending it against crankiness and that common sense which has unfortunately been crank-seduced.
The habit of light smoking needs to be defended because it really is good and pleasant. And the cranks, with their scientific allies are doing a great deal of harm to social health when they are malignant — as they often are — in attacking even the light indulgence. There is this malignancy. And malignancy can damage any system much more than any physical habit. Malignant people, I should imagine, must often get malignant body troubles or else there is nothing at all in psychosomatic theory. There is such a physical 'feel' about malignancy that I am sure it harms body as Well as soul. There is no malignancy in being against smoking, or other things: the ill-humour is often in the social attack; in the way ,the attack is
campaigned..
For instance there is the mandatoriness of the slogan which now has to be put on `smoke'-packets. The message itself is not altogether wrong, but it is rather a redundant truism anyway: perhaps everything is damaging to our health; not simply healthy habits such as smoking and drinking, but even exercises and fresh-air neurosis and hygieneneurosis, and nearly all spartan-puritan prides. The slogan itself is rather a waste of time and money. But that is not really my point — which is that it was improper to enforce, to make mandatory the display of what is really a partisan propaganda on a general merchandise: on a personal item of shopping. The warnings on plastic bags and aerosols and fireworks and medicaments are in a different category.
The smoke-packet slogan is, in my view, little other than that kind of partisan-nudging and accosting which one gets from pavement 'evangelists', political or religious. But even this would be humorously acceptable if it did not have government enforcement. It is therefore legislative impertinence — and as such is typical of the lobbying that induced it. It strongly suggests frustrated spite. (The excessive tax on smoking is, of course, successful spite.)
Most of us could make a list right now of damage-warnings that the legislature might be better employed in publicising; ranging from the serious to the satiric. In fact, the legislature could well warn us officially about itself at times. Too much to ask, of course. So I will warn it about one or two things which can damage its health, too. For in our present example of democratic rule the trend is that the lunatic fringe is sidling towards the vital parts at a disturbing rate: that government is lurching into actual crankiness. Apart from this anti-smoking thing there is the approach
of abortion (all-legalised-andwi(l-become -all-permissive), communal sex-madness, euthanasia, free crime and — well, Europeanisation (how can a common' market be a market?). Now, I am not one of those who hold that Britain is dying on her feet since she is currently more prostrate than standing. No vigorous and healthy country, in my opinion, would have in the serious aspect of its legislature any, even tentative, programme for the aforementioned cranky and malignant measures. And that partisan slogan on all `smoke'-packets would never have been • afforded such a fantastic public 'hoarding' whose total area must be in square miles by now. Its even being suggested in a parliament would have alerted any lively country to the dangerous presence of crank-bacteria.
Lung cancer. I am not a doctor (nor, incidentally, connected with any tobacco firm) but I concede that there must be something in what they say. Undoubtedly, the heavy habit must mean higher risk, but the absence of the disease among many millions of moderateto-very-light addicts should at least moderate the virulence of many anti-smoking prodnoses. If there were no pleasure-help in the 'smoke' at all it might make a great difference — but for many people it is almost the only pleasure. And considering some of the hazards of life I reckon that controlled smoking is very low on the list indeed. Children smoking? Well, that can be seen — in its spreading — as the fault of another type of crank, don't we know. And again with regard to cancer I can't help wondering about the question of malignancy, as I said. A malignant mind (or soul) in a malignant body? But in that case, what about those good people who have cancer? As I shy away from that awkward one I still feebly mutter that if the flesh can hide some tumours — from both expert and other observation at times — so can the spirit: and often more subtly. Yes, I do admit that this can be wildly wrong in some cases. I merely wonder if it is so in others. "Smoking and/or spleen can damage your health • ..?"
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