Smoking — everybody’s health problem

Tobacco is credited with causing cancer, but a deeper cause for lung cancer and many other diseases of modern times may lie in modern commercial processing and refining of products. A Philippine Information Agency (PIA) press release last week reported that three big tobacco buying firms urged farmers to plant early and recommended heavy application of commercial fertilizer to ensure the high quality of leaf production. This has raised concern from the agronomists of the National Tobacco Administration although its Farm Development Dept. Manager strongly recommends a 25 percent reduction from the volume prepared by the tobacco firm buyers. He said that aside from being costly to farmers, commercial fertilizer damages organic matter in the soil.

It is remarkable how much processing and manufacturing has occurred purely in the name of profit. Tobacco excise tax also contributes significantly to internal revenues of governments. Thus, cigarette and tobaccos will continue to be sold, despite its harmful effects.

Native Americans used tobacco before the Europeans arrived in America in the 15th century. They were called Indians by Christopher Columbus who thought he landed in India. Early European settlers in America learned to smoke and brought the practice back to Europe, where it became hugely popular.

At extremely high doses, tobacco becomes hallucinogenic. The "Indians" ordinarily consumed them in extraordinarily high quantities and used as an entheogen, whose etymological meaning is "generating the divine from within" and was taken by Shamans or medicine men to bring on a spiritual experience. In addition to being smoked, uncured tobacco was often eaten, drunk as tobacco juice or used in enemas. Tobacco contains the alkaloid nicotine, a powerful neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to insects. A lethal dose of nicotine is contained in as little as one half of a cigar or three cigarettes, however, only a fraction of the nicotine contained in these products is actually released into the smoke. Concentrated forms of nicotine are effective insecticides. Other active alkaloids in tobacco include harmala whose medicinal purpose is used to stimulate the central nervous system.

Major hazards of tobacco use involved carcinogenic compounds in tobacco and tobacco smoke due to the processing it goes through. The fertilizers used in high concentration, as suggested by tobacco buying firms, result to plant damage or reduced yield. Furthermore, insecticides used on tobacco plants operate mostly by toxicity, attacking brain function and the nervous system along with body chemistry. A website notes that the "Surgeon General’s Warning’ written in cigarette packs and ads warn only against smoking, not tobacco. Thus, almost all smoking-related deaths is preventable without depriving people of the pleasures of smoking simply by eliminating chemical contaminants and poisonous synthetic materials and requiring manufacturers to use 100 percent natural tobacco leaf.

One of the oldest books we can use is the Bible. The Old Testament relates that Adam and his six children lived for more than 900 years while Moses died at the age of 120 years. This long life was made possible because of their lifestyle and diet. In modern times, people smoke, aside from ever, over consuming ... the more the better. The big corporations earn and make profit.