Back in 1962, it was reported that there was evidence that smoking cigarettes could cause lung cancer. Shortly after, it was confirmed that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. I was working as a medical technician, and I smoked cigarettes as did most of the people working at the hospital. We knew that there was something to the news as the doctors started to switch from cigarettes to cigars and pipes. I quit smoking and lasted for two years until the secondhand smoke got me, and I started smoking a pipe. For the next few years, I quit and restarted many times. I was addicted to tobacco.
An all-out media blitz against tobacco started in the ’80s, and by the ’90s there was no place to smoke anymore. No cigarettes after dinner, with a cup of coffee, or with a beer. You had to go into hiding to smoke because you had become a second class citizen. Smoking had stopped on TV long ago, and the movies were being weaned slowly but surely. Smoking in a movie became a worse sin than too much sex or bad language. With the cost of tobacco rising and increasing stigma associated with smoking, the percentage of people smoking seemed to level off at less than 25%. Even I quit for good and without being subjected to secondhand smoke made it stick. It had been a bad habit and very hard to give up.
With all of this turmoil about smoking and using tobacco products, I never heard anyone say that I or anyone else who smoked was ill or had a disease. We were called a few names and looked down on as if we belonged to some lower class but were never called “ill.” Tobacco was chased out of the public arena and into the hiding places smokers have to use now. So why is alcohol and drug addiction called a disease but tobacco isn’t? A friend answered my question of why anyone would take the first dose of heroin when they knew that it was so addictive, by telling me that it was a disease. I answered them with, pneumonia is a disease but I don’t know of anybody swallowing pneumococcus to get it. I wasn’t very popular with that remark because my friend was close to an addict.
We are seeing more drug overdose deaths than motor vehicle accidental deaths now. I have railed against the fact that we accept the traffic accident deaths of 40 to 50 thousand a year and have refused to spend the money to enforce the traffic laws or increase the driver education necessary to get a license. We are now seeing the media and the public starting to recognize addiction to drugs as a problem that affects all of us and not just those close to the problem. In fact most of us have felt the sting of drug use or overdose or know someone who has. I have friends who lost their daughter to a heroin/fentanyl overdose and probably will never get over that loss. It is a helpless feeling to see this happen and know that this family had done everything they could to prevent it but the addiction seemed to always win. One dose of heroin and a person is hooked. I still do not know why anybody in their right mind would take that first dose, but they do at an increasing rate. It is epidemic in our country, and we seem helpless to stop it.
My church has started to try some action in the recovery area and has joined two other churches in this endeavor. It is a step program started by Rick Warren and has had some good results. We will see if it works. Our local free health clinic, of which I am on the board of directors, started a free needle program last year and we are astounded at the number of people who have signed up. The problem is that many have not signed up due to fear of police action. No such action is or has been taken. The reason for the free needles is to prevent the transmission of AIDS and Hepatitis C. Hopefully we can keep addicts alive long enough to get help and return to a normal life. There are very few beds available in my state for rehab, and most addicts are at the mercy of outside groups and funding for help. Trying to treat the problem after it has occurred has become a thankless job and is not going very well.
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