Tobacco Awareness Quotes

The threat of lawsuits has increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking and has made tobacco companies market their dangerous nicotine delivery systems more responsibly. The threat of lawsuits has made all kinds of products safer. For example, over the last forty years or so, automobile deaths have been cut nearly in half by safety features in cars, developed and implemented in response to lawsuits.

Before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: the “first sleep,” or “dead sleep,” lasting from the evening until the early hours of the morning; and the “second” or “morning” sleep, which took the slumberer safely to daybreak. In between, there was an hour or more of wakefulness known as the “watch,” in which “Families rose to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Many others made love, prayed, and . . . reflected on their dreams, a significant source of solace and self-awareness.” In the intimacy of the darkness, families and lovers could hold deep, rich, wandering conversations that had no place in the busy daytime.

A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a matter of experience, a professional expertise. It is a facility most of us can acquire. But while a confidence trickster, a play actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief. For him, deception is first a matter of self defense. He must protect himself not only from without, but from within, and against the most natural of impulses. Though he earn a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a razor. Though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but banalities. Though he be an affectionate husband and father, he must within all circumstances without himself from those with whom he should naturally confide. Aware of the overwhelming temptations which assail a man permanently isolated in his deceit, Limas resorted to the course which armed him best. Even when he was alone, he compelled himself to live with the personality he had assumed. It is said that Balzac on his deathbed inquired anxiously after the health and prosperity of characters he had created. Similarly, Limas, without relinquishing the power of invention, identified himself with what he had invented. The qualities he had exhibited to Fiedler: the restless uncertainty, the protective arrogance concealing shame were not approximations, but extensions of qualities he actually possessed. Hence, also, the slight dragging of the feet, the aspect of personal neglect, the indifference to food, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and tobacco. When alone, he remained faithful to these habits. He would even exaggerate them a little, mumbling to himself about the iniquities of his service. Only very rarely, as now, going to bed that evening, did he allow himself the dangerous luxury of admitting the great lie that he lived.

Auden regarded amphetamines as one of the “labor-saving devices” in the “mental kitchen,” alongside alcohol, coffee, and tobacco—although he was well aware that “these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down.

The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws.... These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.

But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer’s feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist’s love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it ‘superhuman’; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity. Maslow’s importance is that he has placed these experiences of ‘transcendence’ at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of ‘the source of power, meaning and purpose’ inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called ‘generalised hypertension’, a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a ‘passively negative’ attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstream. Alcohol may produce the necessary relaxation, switch off the anxiety, allow one to feel like a real human being instead of a bundle of over-tense nerves. Recurrence of the hypertension makes the alcoholic remedy a habit, but the disadvantages soon begin to outweigh the advantage: hangovers, headaches, fatigue, guilt, general inefficiency. And, above all, passivity. The alcoholics are given mescalin or LSD, and then peak experiences are induced by means of music or poetry or colours blending on a screen. They are suddenly gripped and shaken by a sense of meaning, of just how incredibly interesting life can be for the undefeated. They also become aware of the vicious circle involved in alcoholism: misery and passivity leading to a general running-down of the vital powers, and to the lower levels of perception that are the outcome of fatigue. ‘The spirit world shuts not its gates, Your heart is dead, your senses sleep,’ says the Earth Spirit to Faust. And the senses sleep when there is not enough energy to run them efficiently. On the other hand, when the level of will and determination is high, the senses wake up. (Maslow was not particularly literary, or he might have been amused to think that Faust is suffering from exactly the same problem as the girl in the chewing gum factory (described earlier), and that he had, incidentally, solved a problem that had troubled European culture for nearly two centuries). Peak experiences are a by-product of this higher energy-drive. The alcoholic drinks because he is seeking peak experiences; (the same, of course, goes for all addicts, whether of drugs or tobacco.) In fact, he is moving away from them, like a lost traveller walking away from the inn in which he hopes to spend the night. The moment he sees with clarity what he needs to do to regain the peak experience, he does an about-face and ceases to be an alcoholic.

As soon as we fail to promptly obey the senses of smell and taste, they grow more lax in the fulfilment of their duty, and gradually allow harmful matter to pass unchallenged into the body. You are aware how one can become used to sitting in dense clouds of tobacco-smoke and inhaling it just as if it were healthy fresh air. The tongue has been still further corrupted, and we know that it can gradually be habituated to most unnatural food. Need I remind you of the different dishes and beverages which we now think indispensable, all of which were unknown some centuries ago? To these the present generation has grown so accustomed, that it would rather renounce a natural diet than give them up.

Doubt is crucial in science—in the version we call curiosity or healthy skepticism, it drives science forward—but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take uncertainties out of context and create the impression that everything is unresolved. This was the tobacco industry's key insight: that you could use normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge." ...Individual clinicians cannot single-handedly combat this kind of antiscience, a climate that has only been fostered by some political and religious leaders and by the social media. But at the very least, we can make our patients aware of the forces at play and the mind games that such merchants of doubt employ.

a long line of men, each with a torch, all dressed in the finery of the Highland chieftains. They were barbarous and splendid, decked in grouse feathers, the silver of swords and dirks gleaming red by the torchlight, picked out amid the folds of tartan cloth. The pipes stopped abruptly, and the first of the men strode into the clearing and stopped before the stands. He raised his torch above his head and shouted, “The Camerons are here!” Loud whoops of delight rang out from the stands, and he threw the torch into the kerosene-soaked wood, which went up with a roar, in a pillar of fire ten feet high. Against the blinding sheet of flame, another man stepped out, and called, “The MacDonalds are here!” Screams and yelps from those in the crowd that claimed kinship with clan MacDonald, and then— “The MacLachlans are here!” “The MacGillivrays are here!” She was so entranced by the spectacle that she was only dimly aware of Roger. Then another man stepped out and cried, “The MacKenzies are here!” “Tulach Ard!” bellowed Roger, making her jump. “What was that?” she asked. “That,” he said, grinning, “is the war cry of clan MacKenzie.” “Sounded like it.” “The Campbells are here!” There must have been a lot of Campbells; the response shook the bleachers. As though that was the signal he had been waiting for, Roger stood up and flung his plaid over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you afterward by the dressing rooms, all right?” She nodded, and he bent suddenly and kissed her. “Just in case,” he said. “The Frasers’ cry is Caisteal Dhuni!” She watched him go, climbing down the bleachers like a mountain goat. The smell of woodsmoke filled the night air, mixing with the smaller fragrance of tobacco from cigarettes in the crowd. “The MacKays are here!” “The MacLeods are here!” “The Farquarsons are here!” Her chest felt tight, from the smoke and from emotion. The clans had died at Culloden—or had they? Yes, they had; this was no more than memory, than the calling up of ghosts; none of the people shouting so enthusiastically owed kinship to each other, none of them lived any longer by the claims of laird and land, but … “The Frasers are here!” Sheer panic gripped her, and her hand closed tight on the clasp of her bag. No, she thought. Oh, no. I’m not. Then the moment passed, and she could breathe again, but jolts of adrenaline still thrilled through her blood. “The Grahams are here!” “The Inneses are here!” The Ogilvys, the Lindsays, the Gordons … and then finally, the echoes of the last shout died. Brianna held the bag on her lap, gripped tight, as though to keep its contents from escaping like the jinn from a lamp. How could she? she thought, and then, seeing Roger come into the light, fire on his head and his bodhran in his hand, thought again, How could she help it?

My overarching premise is that good people who want to be married accidentally hurt one another and betray each other’s trust without either partner being aware of it as it is happening until their marriage slowly becomes toxic and/or ends. Just as health professionals in the 1950s and ’60s were compelled to sound the alarm regarding the dangers of tobacco smoking to a then-unaware public, this book’s purpose is to raise awareness of routine, everyday behaviors happening in marriage (or any long-term romantic relationship) that will lead to relationship sickness and death if gone unchecked.

The insula also gives rise to empathy. People who are more sensitive to emotional cues from others have greater insula activation and score higher on tests of empathy. And the insula lights up during meditation sessions, especially when the meditator is feeling kindness and compassion. As the meditator expands his definition of connection to include other people and eventually the entire universe, he feels one with everything. In the words of a comprehensive meditation review, “the habitual reified dualities between subject and object, self and other, in-group and out-group dissipate.” As he expands the borders of his tent to infinity, massive changes occur in his brain activity. Insula Activation Benefits Increases Decreases Elevated emotional states Anger Motor control Fear Kindness Anxiety Compassion Depression Empathy Addiction Longevity Chronic pain Immunity Happiness Love Sensory enjoyment Introspection Sense of fulfillment Feelings of connectedness Focus Self-awareness As well as mediating our empathy and compassion circuits, the insula has several other functions. It collects information from a far-flung network of receptors inside our body as well as from our skin. It then stimulates feelings such as hunger that then prompt actions such as seeking food. The dark side of this mechanism is that it can stimulate cravings for drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. Addicts show increased insula activation even before consuming their drug of choice. The insula also lights up when we feel pain or even anticipate feeling pain. Meditators are more “in the moment” when it comes to physical pain, releasing it more quickly. They may also experience overwhelming cravings, as we’ll see in Chapter 5. These are positive cravings directing them toward the ecstatic states found in Bliss Brain.

I LIVE IN A part of the country that at one time a good farmer could take some pleasure in looking at. When I first became aware of it, in the 1940s, the better land, at least, was generally well farmed. The farms were mostly small and were highly diversified, producing cattle, sheep, and hogs, tobacco, corn, and the small grains; nearly all the farmers milked a few cows for home use and to market milk or cream. Nearly every farm household maintained a garden, kept a flock of poultry, and fattened its own meat hogs. There was also an extensive “support system” for agriculture: Every community had its blacksmith shop, shops that repaired harness and machinery, and stores that dealt in farm equipment and supplies. Now the country is not well farmed, and driving through it has become a depressing experience. Some good small farmers remain, and their farms stand out in the landscape like jewels. But they are few and far between, and they are getting fewer every year. The buildings and other improvements of the old farming are everywhere in decay or have vanished altogether. The produce of the country is increasingly specialized. The small dairies are gone. Most of the sheep flocks are gone, and so are most of the enterprises of the old household economy. There is less livestock and more cash-grain farming. When cash-grain farming comes in, the fences go, the livestock goes, erosion increases, and the fields become weedy. Like

In the past, a lady of fashion would seductively smoke a long cigarette in an ivory holder; the modern idol of the betel age will probably be the same lady, but this time elegantly spitting out three table-spoons of blood-red betel-spit into an artistically crafted spittoon through teeth blackened by decades of chewing. When such a body offers you a little ground limestone, be aware that this is a gesture of the most genuine friendship.

In At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, the historian A. Roger Ekirch asserts that before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: the “first sleep”, or “dead sleep”, lasting from the evening until the early hours of the morning; and the “second” or “morning” sleep, which took the slumber safely to daybreak. In between, there was an hour or more of wakefulness known as the “watch”, in which “Families rose to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Many others made love, prayed, and ... reflected on their dreams, a significant source of solace and self-awareness.” In the intimacy of the darkness, families and lovers could hold deep, rich, wandering conversations that had no place in the busy daytime. This was a function of the times in which the night really was dark, when the poor would go to sleep early to save the price of candles, and even the rich would have the choice of struggling on with their occupation in limited light or surrendering to sleep. Outside the house, the streets were usually unlit, so the only navigable space was home. This was so ordinary, and perhaps also so private moment in the day, that little was written about it. Ekirch picks up a range of passing references to the first and second sleeps in diaries, letters, and literature, but this ancient practice is nearly invisible to the contemporary eye.

I have questions," she said. "Ask away." Poppy decided to be blunt. "Are you dangerous? Everyone says you are." "To you? No." "To others?" Harry shrugged innocently. "I'm a hotelier. How dangerous could I be?" Poppy gave him a dubious glance, not at all deceived. "I may be gullible, Harry, but I'm not brainless. You know the rumors... you're well aware of your reputation. Are you as unscrupulous as you're made out to be?" Harry was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on a distant cluster of blossoms. The sun threw its light into the filter of branches, scattering leaf shadows over the pair in the arbor. Eventually he lifted his head and looked at her directly, his eyes greener than the sun struck rose leaves. "I'm not a gentleman," he said. "Not by birth, and not by character. Very few men can afford to be honorable while trying to make a success of themselves. I don't lie, but I rarely tell everything I know. I'm not a religious man, nor a spiritual one. I act in my own interests, and I make no secret of it. However, I always keep my side of a bargain, I don't cheat, and I pay my debts." Pausing, Harry fished in his coat pocket, pulled out a penknife, and reached up to cut a rose in full bloom. After neatly severing the stem, he occupied himself with stripping the thorns with the sharp little blade. "I would never use physical force against a woman, or anyone weaker than myself. I don't smoke, take snuff, or chew tobacco. I always hold my liquor. I don't sleep well. And I can make a clock from scratch." Removing the last thorn, he handed the rose to her, and slipped the knife back into his pocket. Poppy concentrated on the satiny pink rose, running her fingers along the top edges of the petals.