 Are you a smoker? I was. We anchored in a bay
at the island of Chacachacare near Trinidad in the West Indies, to
celebrate St. Valentine's day 2000 in peace. We, along with a handful of
others, were escaping the chaos that is Carnival, having seen it all
before. We knew most of the other boats anchored there and, early on the
second day, some young friends called by and asked if we would like to walk up to the
lighthouse with them. Linnet was far too busy putting this magazine together for
you, so I joined them in their dinghy and we went ashore.
Chacachacare Light is, to my knowledge, one of the highest
placed lighthouses in the world. I had run up to the light in 1993, a
distance of, approximately, two and a half miles.
At that time, I had not smoked for twenty years and enjoyed
running. Arriving at the summit I had been breathing easily and had made
the ascent in a respectable twenty five minutes.
Then I had taken up smoking again, the result of
believing that 'the odd cigar' would do no harm, a belief that soon had me puffing away at
forty to sixty cigarettes a day.
After deciding that we would walk, not run, up to the lighthouse we set
off. The gradient is steep at the base of the hill and gets progressively steeper. Somewhat less than half way up I found I was seriously short of breath and drenched in
sweat, and I was only walking! At the summit, nearly one hour since setting off, I arrived quite
exhausted.
I drank some water from one of the old water butts and looked out across the green sea towards Grenada.
Between heart thumps and wheezing, I vowed that I would never smoke
again and I am keeping that vow. I must add that I am not smug about stopping smoking, I am just grateful that I got invited
to go for a walk that day.
As executive editor of MarineZine, I have access to all kinds of statistics on all kinds of topics, over and above the sea and all who sail on
her. Whilst working my way through material on pollution and the environment, I noticed a section on smoking and
its effects on the individual and those in his/her environs.
According to one of the documents I perused, as late as 1970 smoking was
still considered harmless and was even believed to be beneficial, in some cases, for the relief of
tension. During World War II, physicians actively endorsed sending soldiers tobacco.
Cigarettes were included in the field rations of the U.S. armed forces
until 1975.
Some epidemiologists noticed, however, that lung cancer, rare before the
1930s, had increased dramatically. The American Cancer Society and other
associations initiated a number of studies comparing deaths among smokers, and non smokers, over a period of ten
years.
All such studies found increased mortality among smokers from cancer of
the lungs, mouth, larynx, oesophagus, bladder, kidney and pancreas. In extensive tests, using animals, the research has confirmed that tobacco, when smoked, produces 4,000 chemicals.
Some of these chemicals are highly toxic and carcinogenic. Nicotine, it
would appear, is both poisonous and highly addictive.
In America, it is estimated that 400,000 deaths a year are directly linked to
smoking and that smokers are 23 times more likely to die from cancer than non-smokers.
Additionally, there are three thousand deaths a year attributed to passive smoking and
it is estimated that regular breathing of second hand smoke doubles the risk of heart disease.
The American Cancer Society insists that smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the world to-day.
How strange that governments, most of which are not
known for their liberality, consider the manufacture and sale of
cigarettes a legitimate industry and even impose taxes upon them, thus
adding to their air of legitimacy. It is all very well to print warnings
on the packaging but it is doubtful that people would become smokers in
the first place, were it not for the availability of cigarettes in every
corner of the world.
Land that is used to grow tobacco is also suited to
the production of a great number of other plants, the vast majority of
which would be beneficial to the human race. One can only imagine that
tobacco growers are not offered ready markets for other crops that could
be produced by them and thus continue to produce poisons to meet the
demand. A demand that is fanned by corporations involved in the
processing and distribution of those poisons to anyone willing to inhale
them...
Here as some websites that may help you in the battle
to give up smoking;
Giving
Up Smoking.co.uk
Quit.org.uk
BBC
Top Tips For Quittting
Cancer
Research UK Help With Quitting If
you know of others that are helpful, anywhere in the world, we'd love to
hear from you!
|
