Cigarette Slaves

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     The Agriculture Department has released figures indicating that cigarette smoking reached a new high in 1960. Consumers of tobacco products spent about $7,525,000,000, and among these products were 489 billion cigarettes. This is a national shame. The most tragic part of it is that many who profess to be followers of God's Son contribute their share to a useless and harmful habit. It is beyond my power to comprehend why any father or grandfather can puff the stinking weed in the presence of a little son, or grandson, and thus influence a small lad to become a victim of a disgusting habit which may some day sear the tissues of his lungs and fasten a cancer upon his vitals which will hasten him to an untimely grave.

     That men will deliberately, and for a mistaken sense of what they deem a pleasurable sensation or appeal to the flesh, sell themselves into a form of slavery which reduces them to whitened, nervous, shaking puppets, subject to a roll of paper containing the toasted leaves of a weed is incongruous; that Christians should allow themselves to be so ensnared and trapped by their own appetites, is unexplainable. Of course, it is generally useless to reason with one who is in slavery, for a slave loses his will and surrenders it to that which enslaves. This does not excuse one continuing a filthy habit, but it explains why most of them cannot quit!