Limelight: Magnificent Obsession By Lubna Abdel-Aziz You dream of her long, slender, delicate shape between your fingers, as you caress that soft, white surface of her skin. You long for her unequivocally euphoric scent filling the air around you; you crave that savoury flavour that enters your lungs feeding your bodily organs with soothing satisfying sensations. She has you under her spell, more alluring than Anthony's Cleopatra, more treacherous than Samson's Delilah, more deadly than Jason's Medea. "SHE" came to the Old World via the New. No one had ever seen or heard of her before. Subtle, aromatic, intoxicating she proceeded slowly and methodically to destroy the world... Old and New; not its monuments and marvels, its wondrous creations and technological advances, but its people, its creators and geniuses, philosophers and artists, farmers and labourers, students and scholars. "SHE" is that almighty seductress we call "the cigarette". It is common knowledge that smoking kills, but what good is knowledge unless we can make use of it! The cigarette has "...more than 50 ways of making life a misery ... and more than 20 ways of killing in general". Statistics available to us from the US and the UK conclude that deaths caused by smoking are five times higher than all deaths resulting from traffic accidents, poisoning, overdose, alcohol, liver diseases, murder, manslaughter and HIV combined. Premature deaths resulting from smoking reached 5 million in 2002 and will rise to 10 million in 2012. 92% per cent of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking, while 30 per cent of all cancer deaths are also the results of smoking. It is the major cause of death from heart disease, emphysema, bronchitis and pneumonia. The list goes on. It reduces fertility in both sexes, inducing miscarriage, premature delivery, stillbirth, infant death, and low birth rate. If that is not enough, it can also be a major cause for depression, diabetes, cataracts, influenza, impotence, ulcers, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, hearing loss and tooth loss, not to mention the all too common, common cold, and the dreaded onslaught of skin wrinkling. One thousand daily hospital admissions in England alone are directly related to smoking ... and what are we doing about it? "The most of everything, and the best of nothing." The Old World, with enough plagues and vices of its own, knew nothing of that magic plant, tobacco, until Christopher Columbus decided to "sail the seven seas, in search of cheaper pepper", in 1492. Seeing how the "Indian" natives thrilled with ecstatic pleasure as they blew on their long "calumets", or peace-pipes, he decided such a gift was worth taking back to his queen. Farmers in Spain and elsewhere in Europe began to grow the plant which was first used as a medicine that helped people relax. In 1560 French diplomat Jean Nicot, from which the botanical name for tobacco, "Nicotania" is derived, introduced the use of tobacco in France. Commercial production of tobacco began in North America in 1612 when English colonist John Rolfe brought some seeds from South America to Virginia and other Southern states where the soil and climate were excellent for tobacco growing. It soon became one of the important crops exported to the mother country. The Queen, Elizabeth I, was delighted with her gallant captain, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had so fattened the coffers of the crown: "I have seen many a man turn his gold into smoke, but you are the first who has turned smoke into gold" ... The dye was cast and "the Elizabethan Age might be better named the beginning of the tobacco age" wrote English dramatist J M Barrie. "That scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh was also the founder of American slavery." The lure of gold conquered all sense of decency and morality ... and tobacco started on its path of destruction. After hearing of its ills, Napoleon I cried "This vice brings in 100 million francs in taxes every year. I will certainly forbid it at once, as soon as you can name a virtue that brings in as much revenue." As it is now, so it was then, considered a dangerous narcotic ... King James I of England who followed Elizabeth Regina, but was less voracious, declared: "A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." Since the 1500s Europeans knew of the perils of tobacco. After 500 years of awareness ... why then do we still smoke? Says Oscar Wilde: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure ... It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want" ... But, to our detriment? Despite irrefutable proof that "cigarettes are killers that travel in packs", they seem irresistible to those who try them. Although 70 per cent of smokers want to quit and 30 per cent attempt to quit every year, less than five per cent succeed ... Once hooked you are shamelessly, deplorably hooked. The addictive substance is "nicotine", amply supplied in the "cigarette", and her other deadly sisters, the cigar, the pipe, snuff and chewing tobacco. Cigarettes contain 4000 compounds to make your smoking experience more pleasurable, 60 of them are known carcinogens ... Other compounds are ammonia, tar and carbon-monoxide ... yet we embrace the killers ... How can we help it when their addiction is similar to that determined in heroin and cocaine... Why do we even try them? Why not? Smoking is cool, glamorous, sexy! Or so has Hollywood decried. Hollywood's love affair with the tobacco industry was "a marriage made in hell". They taught us the art of romantic smoking. There they were our idols, our role-models, larger than life on the big screen puffing away for decades. Despite a 1988 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the tobacco industry and 46 states of the US to eliminate tobacco use, it has actually increased by 50 per cent in the 1990s, in the most subtle and powerful form of promotion directed towards our youth ... Since 90 per cent of all smokers begin before the age of 18, the industry benefits greatly by concentrating on the young. Smoking in movies triples the risk of adolescent smoking. It becomes a symbol of self-esteem, independence and rebelliousness. All this, and we have not even touched on second-hand smoke! Some stars stopped smoking following the MSA ... among them Julia Roberts, Leonardo di Caprio and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but others like Nicholas Cage, Drew Barrymore and Eddie Murphy continue to light up. Some are provided life-long supplies of their favourite brands ... and they continue to puff away from " Now Voyager " to " Superman ", from " Wall Street " to " Crocodile Dundee ", from " Chicago " to " Titanic " and then there is always the cool Mr Bond who never parts from his cigarette. The cigarette has killed many of Hollywood's shinning stars ... icon Humphrey Bogart, whose love affair with the cigarette was more legendary than his passion for Lauren Bacall. John Wayne whose cigarette was as famous as his swagger, and Gary Cooper " Pride of the Yankees " whose bell tolled too soon at " High Noon " ... all died around the early age of 60. Based on data from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) male smokers lost an average of 13.2 years and female smokers 14.5 years of a " Wonderful life ". One of the most touching manifestations of the harmful effects of smoking was a commercial message by Yul Brynner shot two weeks before his death of lung cancer ... "By the time you see this I will be dead" he laments ... and still we smoke! Are we supposed to concede to the enemy? When our history is written in years to come, will it say that we were destroyed by that tiny, fragile, crushable cigarette? If you smoke STOP, if you do not smoke DON'T START. Disregard the naysayers ... Anytime you stop is a good time and the best time is now. Of course the younger you quit the more the gain. If you quit by the age of 35 you can avoid 90 per cent of tobacco risks ... even after 50 you substantially reduce those risks ... It is never too late to quit. For centuries we have known that: " Tobacco drieth the brain, dimmeth the sight, vitiateth the smell, hurteth the stomach, destroyeth the concoction, disturbeth the humours and spirits, corrupteth the breath, induceth a trembling of the limbs, exsiccateth the windpipe, lungs and liver, annoyeth the milt, scorcheth the heart and causeth the blood to be adjusted ", written by Tobias Veneer (1577-1660), in his Via Recta ad Vitam Longam... and now scientists prove it to us every day. What is there left to say but "Shame on us".
