Let's start by seeing what medical researchers have found.
In 1977, the Surgeon General's colleagues said that if the public knew smoking's severe mental effects, making it not a habit but worse (a mental disorder), that fact becoming publicly known (instead of censored as it is) would have a major impact on the public's perception of smokers ("a profound effect upon the reputation of this behavior")! See the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p 5 (December 1977), quoting Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.
| Ed. Note: See also background on tobacco in brain damage and additional mental disorder terms.
Tobacco pushers seek to censor the medical truth about tobacco causing brain damage and mental disorder. For background on their efforts to censor this type data, see, e.g., M. D. Neuman, A. Bitton and S. A. Glantz, "Tobacco industry influence on the definition of tobacco related disorders by the American Psychiatric Association," 14 Tobacco Control 328-337 (Sept 2005).
See also our tobacco censorship exposé site.
Reputation-impairing action had been recommended by Dr. Herbert H. Tidswell in 1912. Due to pusher hostility and media censorship, note the 65 year delay. |
In early 1980, both the government and the American Psychiatric Association issued books listing smoking in separate classifications for its mental effect—meaning, as a "mental disorder," in the International Classification of Disease, 9th ed. (ICD-9), p 231, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (DSM-III), pp 159-160 and 176-178. Tobacco causes brain damage, is called "Tobacco Organic Mental Disorder" (TOMD). The Manual includes smokers in the TOMD category if withdrawal symptoms occur within 24 hours (most smokers have symptoms in two hours).
You, the reader, can easily verify this. Next time you are at your doctor's office, talk to the staff. They will generally have at least the International Classification of Disease.
An extensive analysis of the fact of smoking as a mental disorder is found in a Veterans Adminstration litigation case by a veteran seeking compensation for tobacco-caused injury. Note that tobacco mental disorder symptoms include odd sterotyped gestures, typical of other mental disorders as well. (The U.S. government, the IRS, deems treatment for this mental disorder, smoking, as a valid medical deduction, as valid as for a deduction for treating any other mental disorder; see the 1982 Michigan Law Review advocacy article
In the Autumn 1998 issue of Tobacco Control, a voluminous summary of data on the subject from a June A.M.A. conference was recently published.
"Persons with mental illness are about twice as likely to smoke as other persons." And, "Persons with a currently active mental disorder consumed 44 per cent of all the cigarettes smoked in this nationally representative sample."—Karen Lasser, MD, et al, "Smoking and Mental Illness: A Population-Based Prevalence Study," 284 J Am. Med. Ass'n (#20) 2606-2610 (22/29 Nov 2000). (Also at http://www.unhooked.com/ATOD/Lasserjama00.pdf.)
And, "smoking is more common in patients . . . with accelerated than with benign hypertension. It appears that hypertensive patients who smoke regularly are more likely to developed the accelerated phase than those who do not."—Elliott, John M., and F. O. Simpson, "Cigarettes and accelerated hypertension," The New Zealand Med J (#662) 447-449 (25 June 1980).
Tobacco-caused damage is cumulative with age; "elderly smokers have increased risks of dementia and cognitive decline," say Kaarin J. Anstey, Chwee von Sanden, Agus Salim and Richard O'Kearney, "Smoking as a Risk Factor for Dementia and Cognitive Decline: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies, 166 American Journal of Epidemiology (#4) 367-378 (14 June 2007).
"Avant le . . . tabac, la folie était une maladie très rare dans l'humanité,"—Hippolyte A. Depierris, M.D., Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p 346. Before tobacco, mental disorder was a very rare malady among humans.
Toxic tobacco smoke (TTS) is radioactive and contains toxic chemicals, and produces toxic chemicals emissions far above the safe and legal limits. Harm by tobacco pushers is foreseeable and thus is by definition intentional.
The brain operates on electrical impulses and chemicals, e.g., serotonin, dopamine, etc. They are involved in regulating mood, reasoning, ethical controls, and all brain functions. Nerves communicate with each other by using such chemicals to transfer messages, cross the synapses, between nerves. Tobacco's toxic chemicals have an impairing effect on the message transfer process. Naturally, mood, reasoning, ethical controls, and other brain functions are impaired. TTS-caused damage, says Thomas Edison (1914) is irreversible.
"Major depressive disorders [[have been] long considered to be of neurochemical origin [and] have recently been associated with impairments in signaling pathways that regulate neuroplasticity and cell survival," say H. K. Manji, W. C. Drevets, and D. S. Charney, in "The Cellular Neuorobiology of Depression," in 7 Nature Medicine (#5) 541-547 (May 2001).
"Cigarette smoking is associated with worse treatment outcomes in acutely manic patients with bipolar disorder," says Andrew Czyzewski, "Smoking interferes with treatment for bipolar mania" (J Affect Disord 2008; 110: 126-134 (1 August 2008). "Studies have shown that lifetime history of smoking is significantly related to earlier onset of the first depressive or manic episode, greater symptomatic severity, poorer functioning, and a lifetime history of suicide attempt, comorbid anxiety disorders and substance dependence." Note that "smoking [is cited as] a comorbid condition requiring active intervention."
Medical research has long studied the subject. Note classic writings, e.g., by
Albrecht von Haller, Elementa Physiologiae: Elements of Physiology (Lausannae, 1757), citing brain importance in pyschic functions; and advocating post-mortem brain examinations; Wilhelm Griesinger, Die Pathologie und Therapie der Psychischen Krankheiten: Pathology and Therapy of Psychic Disorders (Stuttgart: Krabbe, 1845), explaining all mental disorders in brain pathology terms; and Emil Kraepelin, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (1883), citing brain pathology in mental disorders, citing symptom patterns, and developing systematic classification of the type now developed as the DSM-IV.
Smoking a pack a day has effects due to the TTS: fifteen (15) times more likely to develop panic disorder; almost seven (7) times more likely to develop agoraphobia, and over five (5) times more likely to develop generalized anxiety disorder. See Journal of the American Medical Ass'n (Nov 2000); Pediatrics (Oct 2000), and NIDA Tobacco Facts. TTS toxic chemicals including nicotine impair the central nervous system, due to damage to the body's ability to use oxygen.
Tobacco has a record of providing an hallucinogenic effect. "Certainly, a long literature exists on use of tobacco and its derivatives in [Indian] ceremonial trance induction, witchcraft, divination . . . . Native use of tobacco parallels that of other hallucinogenic substances . . . The amounts of harman and norharman in cigarette smoke are about 10-20 mcg. per cigarette. This is about 40 to 100 times greater than that found in the tobacco leaf, indicating that pyrosynthesis occurs in the leaves during the burning . . . . harmine in relatively small doses crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes changes in the neural transmission in the visual system."—Oscar Janiger, M.D. and Marlene Dobkin De Rios, M.D., "Nicotiana an Hallucinogen?," 30 Econ Bot 149-151 (April-June 1976).
Pre-Columbian Indians (meaning before 1492, before Columbus) used tobacco for its hallucinogenic effect, as shown by the following references:
Jan G. R. Elferink, "The Narcotic and Hallucinogenic Use of Tobacco in Pre-Columbian Central America," 7 Journal of Ethnopharmacology 111-122 (1983)
Poindexter, E. H., and R. D. Carpenter, "Isolation of Harman and Norharman from Tobacco and Cigarette Smoke," 1 Phytochemistry 215-221 (1962)
Murphree, Henry B. (Ed.), "The Effects of Nicotine and Smoking on the Central Nervous System," 142 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1-133 (1967)
Janiger, Oscar, and Mariene Dobkin de Rios, "Suggestive Hallucinogenic Proeprties of Tobacco," 4 Medical Anthropology Newsletter (4) 6-11 (1973)
See also Jacobs, Barry L., "How Hallucinogenic Drugs Work," 75 American Scientist (#4) 386-392 (Jul-Aug 1987), and
Hallucinating Smoker Starts Fire in Hospital (Ann Arbor (MI) News, 21 October 2012). "An intoxicated patient smoking an imaginary cigarette in a bed in one room of the recently expanded ER. 'He was trying to light a non-existent cigarette. He thought he had one, he didn't have one, that caused the bedding to catch on fire . . . '" injuring himself and the nurse on duty.
In 1527, Archbishop de las Casas of Spain wrote about tobacco's adverse brain effect.
In 1604, James I, King of England wrote a denunciation of smoking due to tobacco's severe brain effects (his doctors had told him in 1603). He had attended a conference at Oxford University on the subject.
In 1699, the French "Surgeon General" (the King's physician) held a national medical conference on tobacco's role in brain damage. Modern evidence confirms.
In 1853, Drs. William Alcott and Elisha Harris wrote extensively on tobacco, including its addictive aspect, enslaving users, and citing the term "tobacco drunkard." Americans took heed. Result: There was declining U.S. tobacco use, reported by J. B. Neil, 1 The Lancet (#1740) 23 (3 Jan 1857). (This trend was not reversed until the arrival of pro-cigarette disinformation advertising and widespread media censorship of tobacco's adverse effects.)
In 1857, data was widely circulated world-wide in The Lancet on the tobacco hazard and mental disorder effects. Dr. Samuel Solly specifically said that people have "become deranged from smoking tobacco" for the specific reason that tobacco is "one of the causes of insanity," and that autopsies of "inveterate smokers" always reveal brain damage. Modern evidence confirms.
In 1862, Dr. Reuben D. Mussey cited tobacco use as leading to "confusion or weakness of the mental faculties; peevishness and irritability of temper; instability of purpose; seasons of great depression of the spirits; long fits of unbroken melancholy and despondency, and in some cases, entire and permanent mental derangement," in his Health: Its Friends and Its Foes (Boston: Gould & Lincoln), p 101.
In 1865, smoker John Wilkes Booth and accomplices, aiding and abetting tobacco farmer activity, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Much litigation followed, e.g., U.S. v Surratt, 27 Fed Cas 1367 (May 1865) (# 16,423); Ex parte Mudd, 17 Fed Cas 954 (# 9,899); 8 Am St Trials 423 (Sep 1868) (IAW 2 Brightly Dig. 101, 140); and US v Surratt, 6 DC 306 (6 Nov 1868). This was the first of three-in-a-row assassinations of Presidents by smokers. The pattern helped develop awareness of smokers' dangerousness in terms of crime.
In 1876, Depierris, Hippolyte A., Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac (Paris: Dentu, 1876) cited symptoms among smokers including becoming "dépossédés du sens humain . . . par une impulsion qu'on ne peut qualifier que de folie . . . désordre . . . comme les bêtes fauves . . . . dégradation narcotique les abaisse . . . rage . . . ils déchirent, ils mutilent sans nécessité, par instinct féroce," p 342; and, "Avant le . . . tabac, la folie était une maladie très rare dans l'humanité," p 346.
In 1882, Guiteau's Case, 10 F 161-203; 14 Am St Trials 1-158 (DC, 25 Jan 1882) was a crime case, in which an insanity defense was used for smoker Charles J. Guiteau for having assassinated President James Garfield on 25 July 1881. Assassin Leon Czolgosz would also use an insanity defense, 20 years later, re the assassination of Pres. William McKinley. U.S. v Czolgosz, 14 Am St Trials 159-231 (1901).
In 1882, Meta Lander, The Tobacco Problem, 6th ed. (Boston: Lee and Shepard Pub, 1882), pp 141-161, published an overview of smoking's adverse effects including on the brain. The bottom line is, in the words of Dr. L. E. Keeley, Keeley Institute, Dwight, Illinois: "Tobacco . . . lays the foundation of nearly every nervous [mental] disorder now common to the people of America," p 150. Lander at p 161 quotes one analyst saying that "the worst of [tobacco's effects] is the destruction of the reasoning power in man." P 164 cites smoker death "due to congestion of the brain from cigarette poisoning."
In 1889, Prof. Theodore Billroth, a famous surgeon, said, "Society is becoming more and more neurotic, and this is due to alcohol and tobacco." per Corti, p 260
Also in 1889, doctors reported to the Michigan House of Representatives about cigarettes causing insanity, and cited symptoms re which modern terminology would be to the effect of impaired will-power, anomie, depravity, psychopathology, abulia, and/or impaired ethical and impulse controls.
In 1897, Tennessee banned cigarette manufacture and sale. In 1898, the Supreme Court of Tennesseee upheld the constitutionality of the law and took judicial notice of tobacco's adverse effect on the brain.
In 1899, Dr. Matthew Woods in 32 Journ. of the Am. Med. Ass'n (#13) 685 (1 April 1899), published an article on the subject of tobacco and brain damage, specifically saying, smoking "causes insanity." Modern evidence confirms.
In 1901, smoker Leon F. Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley. Again, as in the prior assassination-by-smoker case, supra, an insanity defense was used, U.S. v Czolgosz, 14 Am St Trials 159-231 (NY, 26 Sep 1901). Three assassinations in 40 years of Presidents, by smokers, offered strong evidence of smoker dangerousness, impaired ethical and impulse controls.
In 1907 that data was reaffirmed in detail. In 1909 Michigan banned cigarettes by law (MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216) for that reason among others.
In 1913, Dr. Abel Gy, cited smoker symptoms (including "résignation, à une sorte de fatalisme, de désintéressement pour tout ce qui l'intéressait naguère. Le sujet constate bien cette déchéance, mais parce que le tabac est essentiellement un poison de la volonté, il ne peut se soustraire à l'intoxication. L'apathie conduit l'esprit à la mélancolie, à la rêverie qui n'est pas sans plaire au fumeur") in his book, L'Intoxication Par Tabac (Paris: Masson et Cie, 1913), p 127.
In 1914, the famous Thomas Alva Edison wrote a paper identifying acrolein as one of the toxic chemicals causing smokers' permanent and irreversible brain damage. He was right. Modern evidence confirms.
In 1916, T. Frech and L. Higley cited tobacco addiction as a disease.
In 1917, Dr. James L. Tracy published an article citing smokers' incessant littering as one of the symptoms of their brain damage (just as coughing is a symptom of other disorders!)—delusions of grandeur (smokers are better than everybody else, so do not feel bound to obey the rules the rest of us have to).
In 1922, Michigan's own Dr. John H. Kellogg published a book identifying smoking as a major cause of brain damage, specifically, schizophrenia—100% of schizophrenics smoked. Modern evidence confirms.
In 1925, the French word "éclatement" (referring to a tire blow-out) is used graphically to describe the effect of nicotine (significant cellular level destruction) on the brain.
In 1976, in the case of Porter v County of Cook, 42 Ill App 3d 287; 355 NE2d 561 (7 Sep 1976), there was a cigarette-fire injury damages situation. A mentally ill smoker confined to jail with his cigarettes, was burned severely. He had been hallucinating that smoke would drive away the voices he was hearing.
In December 1977, the Surgeon General's colleagues said that if the public knew smoking is a mental disorder, not a habit, that would have a major impact on the public's perception of smokers ("a profound effect upon the reputation of this behavior")! See the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p 5 (December 1977), quoting Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.
In 1977, the article by Prof. Jerome H. Jaffe, M.D. (Columbia University), "Tobacco Use as a Mental Disorder: The Rediscovery of a Medical Problem," was included in that book, pp 202-217.
1977, this same NIDA book observed that the forthcoming medical reference books would include smoking among the listed mental disorders. This inclusion was done in 1980. It is a mental disorder, not a habit.
| Ed. Note: Reputation-impairing action had been recommended by Dr. Herbert H. Tidswell in 1912.
See also background on tobacco in addiction and additional mental disorder terms. Tobacco pushers seek to censor the medical truth about tobacco causing brain damage and mental disorder. For background on their efforts to censor this type data, see, e.g., M. D. Neuman, A. Bitton and S. A. Glantz, "Tobacco industry influence on the definition of tobacco related disorders by the American Psychiatric Association," 14 Tobacco Control 328-337 (Sept 2005). See also our tobacco censorship exposé site. |
Additionally, William Pollin, M.D., the 1977 NIDA Director said that NIDA gave "increased priority to" combating smoking for "several reasons: the increasing identification of smoking as a prototypic addiction, the status of smoking as a gateway drug to use of stronger or illicit drugs, and [NIDA's] focus on substance abuse as a generic phenomenon that includes tobacco," p vi.
In early 1980, both the government and the American Psychiatric Association issued books listing smoking as a mental disorder, not a habit—in the International Classification of Disease, 9th ed. (ICD-9), and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (DSM-III). An extensive analysis of the latter is found in a Veterans Adminstration litigation case by a veteran seeking compensation for tobacco-caused injury.
In October 1980, this web writer published that fact in a national anti-drug magazine in the context of the massive costs to society of smoking; and in November 1980, repeated it in The Macomb Daily.
In 1982, the Michigan Law Review had an article ("Note - Smoking Cessation Deductions") on tax deductions for treating smokers' addiction, i.e., smokers' mental disorder. Page 240 said "Overwhelming clinical evidence supports characterizing smoking as a physical addiction . . . as a disease." This article was in 81 Mich Law Rev 237-258 (Nov 1982). (The IRS agreed to this in June 1999). Thus smokers' addiction was further officially recognized as a disease warranting treatment.
Federal courts in Nat'l Org. for Reform of Marijuana Laws v Bell, 488 F Supp 123, 138 (D DC, 1980) (referencing tobacco as a drug) and Caprin v Harris, 511 F Supp 589, 590 n 3 (D ND NY, 1981) (referencing the DSM-III), have said this (reference to tobacco smoking in mental disorder terms) in official documents. The Caprin case was a federal social security. Its referencing tobacco smoking in mental disorder terms is further official recognition of the fact.
In 1985, it was noted that "Smoking has been viewed in divergent ways throughout history. . . . for some cultures it has been considered a crime. . . . "—Levine DJ, Johnson RW, "Psychiatric aspects of cigarette smoking," 14 Adv Psychosom Med 48-63 (1985).
In 1986, even North Carolina agreed that to prevent nicotine addiction (euphemism for brain damage) in children, a school smoking ban was acceptable!! The case went all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court! Craig by Craig v Buncombe County Board of Education, 80 NC App 683; 343 SE2d 222 appeal dismissed, 318 NC 281; 348 SE 2d 138 (1986).
In 1989: " Nicotine is a psychoactive drug . . . the pharmacologic and behavioral processes that determine nicotine addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to heroin and cocaine. . . . A puff of smoke results in a measureable nicotine level in the brain in seconds. With regular use, nicotine accumulates in the body during the day and persists overnight. Thus, smokers are exposed to the effects of nicotine 24 hoursa a day. Nicotine readily crosses the blood brain barrier where it acts as an agonist on specific cholinergic receptors in the central nervous system." In 1989: "The mean ages of reported first use . . . ranged from age 12.0 for cigarettes and 12.6 for alcohol, to age 14 for marijuana . . . cigarettes were the drug with the youngest . . . age of onset . . . Use of cigarettes was shown to significantly increase the likelihood [of] using other drugs (e.g., beer, marijuana) two years later . . . [When youths] start with one substance, that substance will most likely be cigarettes, not marijuana or alcohol." Fleming, R., Levanthal, H., Glynn, K., and Ershler, J. "The Role of Cigarettes In The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use." 14 Addictive Behavior 261 (1989).
In 1994: "Among addictive behaviors, cigarette smoking is the one most likely to become established during adolescence . . . Tobacco use is associated with alcohol and illicit drug use and is generally the first drug used by young people who enter a sequence of drug use that can include tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and harder drugs. . . . Tobacco use in adolescence is associated with a range of health-compromising behaviors, including being involved in fights, carrying weapons, engaging in higher-risk sexual behavior, and using alcohol and other drugs. . . . The initiation and development of tobacco use among children and adolescents progresses in five stages: from forming attitudes and beliefs about tobacco, to trying, experimenting with, and regularly using tobacco, to being addicted. . . . Illegal sales of tobacco products are common." U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: A Report of the Surgeon General (1994).
Note three smoker behavior patterns related to sex harassment: "being involved in fights, carrying weapons, engaging in higher-risk sexual behavior." The Surgeon General is simply rewording published findings.
In 1998: the lawsuit of United States v Dominic L. Miller, Case 97-3669 (CA 8, D South Dakota, 11 Aug 1998), involved a mentally ill smoker in a half-way house, not taking his medication, and a concerned staff member checking on him, doing a search.
In 2000, the American Psychiatric Association updated the data on smoking as a mental disorder, not a habit—in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th rev. ed. (DSM-IV-TR), pages 264-269, "Nicotine-Related Disorders . . . Nicotine Use Disorder 305.1 Nicotine Dependence . . . Nicotine-Induced Disorder 292.0 Nicotine Withdrawal . . . ."
"Tobacco dependence among individuals with a mental illness or an addiction is a tremendous problem that goes largely ignored. Studies . . . support a neurobiological link between tobacco use and alcohol dependence, drug dependence, schizophrenia, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and anxiety disorders," say Jill M. Williams and Douglas Ziedonis, "
Addressing tobacco among individuals with a mental illness or an addiction," 29 Addictive Behaviors 1067-1083 (2004).
. . . . And on and on, vast numbers of citations, 1527 to present.
But the public still doesn't know anything about it!! The media doesn't tell them much beyond the false word "habit," indeed, often contains pro-tobacco disinformation.
Governments and religions had desperately fought tobacco. The Holy Inquisition arrrested the first smokers in 1493 and jailed them for seven years. Pope Urban VIII condemned smoking in the 1640's. So did King Murad IV (Turkey) in 1642. And so did the Surgeon General (Benjamin Rush, M.D.) under President George Washington (1798) here in the U.S.
But the public doesn't know any of this. Preventable mental disorder keeps on occurring. Millions are dying. And other evils are involved:
These cigarette effects are easily preventable, simply by enforcement of MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. The public knows none of this. There is near-total media censorship. Disinformation calling smoking a "habit" is easily published. The truth—mental disorder—almost never gets in print, except in medical journals and books.
The media's wide-spread censorship of tobacco-facts, to the extreme of printing of gross disinformation, is not new. It has been cited since at least 1930, see Charles M. Fillmore, Tobacco Taboo (Indianapolis: Meigs Pub Co, 1930), pp 88-89; Lennox Johnston, "Cure of Tobacco-Smoking," 263 The Lancet 480, 482 (6 September 1952); and George Seldes, Never Tire of Protesting, (New York: Lyle Stuart Inc, 1968), Chapters 7-10, pp 61-99. (Seldes founded www.infact.org). When something is published on the subject, the tobacco taboo goes to the extreme of widespread refusal "even to read any book or article which refers to the harmfulness of tobacco . . . or in any other way exposes the evils of the drug." See Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 63.
"In the United States, between 50 and 80 percent of all people with mental illness are smokers, whereas only 20 percent of the general population smokes," says David Gutierrez, in "Those Who Smoke Cigarettes the Most are Often Mentally Ill" (5 June 2008).
Also note "the long alliance of smoking and mental illness." This includes the fact that "many clinicians who work with people with mental illness have themselves recovered from psychiatric conditions, including substance abuse, but have not been able to stop smoking." Source: Steven A. Schroeder, "A Hidden Epidemic," (Washington Post, 18 November 2007), p B07. This "alliance" of smokers as patients and as so-called "clinicians" has long refused to deal with this fact situation: "The facts about smoking and mental illness are stark. Almost half of all cigarettes sold in the United States (44 percent) are consumed by people with mental illness. This is because so many people who have mental illnesses smoke (50 to 80 percent, compared with less than 20 percent of the general population) and because they smoke so many cigarettes a day -- often three packs. Furthermore, smokers with mental illness are much more likely to smoke their cigarettes right down to the filters." (See more by Dr. Schroeder, and the hysterical smoker denunciations!)
"Addiction to tobacco, like addiction to opium, is a specific disease . . . . Its protracted course, the enormous numbers affected, and spreading infection making smoking one of our most serious diseases." Lennox Johnston, "Cure of Tobacco-Smoking," 263 The Lancet 480, 482 (6 September 1952).
"Overwhelming clinical evidence supports characterizing smoking as a physical addiction, one that persists even though the addict knows it subjects him to serious risk of death. Both medical and legal authorities now recognize such a condition as a disease." "Nicotine exerts physiological effects on heart rate, metabolism, and (as would be expected from its addictive influence) on the brain." Comment, "Deducting the Cost of Smoking Cessation Programs Under Internal Revenue Code Section 213," 81 Michigan Law Review 237, 240 (November 1982).
"The crucial smoking problem is addiction. . . . Smoking remains the foremost preventable cause of disease, disability and death in the United States. . . . The better educated Americans have been the first to decide to preserve themselves and their offspring by discontinuing smoking." Col. Eugene C. Jacobs, "Smoking: Insidious Suicide and Personal Air Pollution," 135 Military Medicine 678, 679-680 (August 1970).
As a matter of medical background, "the pharmacology of nicotine has been studied in considerable detail since Langley [19th century] first showed that nicotine stimulated then paralysed ganglion cells." A. K. Armitage, G. H. Hall, C. F. Morrison, 217 Nature 331-334 (27 Jan 1968), referencing J. N. Langley, W. L. Dickinson, 46 Proc Roy Soc (1889).
"It is also of relevance that the absorption of Nicotine through the lungs is extremely rapid and efficient and reaches the brain more rapidly than after intravenous injection. The arm-to-brain circulation time averages 13.5 seconds, whilst the lung-to-brain time is about 7.5 seconds." M. A. H. Russell, 212 The Practitioner 791-800 (June 1974).
Worse, "some 90% of the nicotine delivered to the lungs goes directly to the brain, and it gets there in only 7 s," "much faster than a heroin rush from a peripheral vein." W. A. Check, 247 J Am Med Ass'n (#17) 2333-2338 (7 May 1982).
"Tobacco is a narcotic . . . an addicting substance [with] fatal implications." Lt. Col. Carles T. Brown, "Tobacco Addiction: A Suggestion as to Its Remedy," 50 Texas St Journal of Medicine 35 (Jan 1954).
"Original research on the physiologic effects of carbon monoxide was completed in the 19th century." "The smoker of cigarettes is constantly exposed to levels of carbon monoxide in the range of 500 to 1,500 parts per million when he inhales the cigarette smoke." G. H. Miller, 72 J Indiana St Med Ass'n (12) 903-905 (Dec 1979). "The action of carbonic oxide" was thus long known, e.g., "Autopsies have revealed large foci of softening in the brain, hæmorrhages into the meninges, and capillary apoplexies in the brain substance." George W. Jacoby, 50 New York Med J 172-174 (17 Aug 1889).
This effect arises as tobacco smoke is quite radioactive, see E. A. Martell, "d-Radiation dose at Bronchial Bifurcations of Smokers from Indoor Exposure to Radon Progeny," 80 Proc Nat'l Acad Sci, U.S.A. 1285-1289 (March 1983), and "Tobacco Radioactivity and Cancer in Smokers," 63 American Scientist 404-412 (July-August 1975), specifically, the fact that "Irradiation of endothelial cells of the artery wall has been shown to render them highly permeable to the passage of red cells," p 410. Smoker's brains foreseeably leak blood, thus cerebral hemmorhages and strokes foreseeably result.
Such effects are depressing! So are the many dread conditions smoking leads to. Naturally smokers are more depressed than nonsmokers. See
The tobacco link to depression was being cited in 1836: "confusion or weakness of the mental faculties, peevishness and irritability of temper, instability of purpose, seasons of great depression of the spirits, long fits of unbroken melancholy and despondency, and in some cases, entire and permanent mental derangement."—William A. Alcott M.D., The Use of Tobacco: Its Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Effects on The Human System (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1836), p 36.
Here is an 1862 description, "lowness of spirits . . . disturbed sleep . . . well-nigh unfitted for any kind of business, and his very existence began to be miserably burdensome."—Reuben D. Mussey, M.D., LL.D., Health: Its Friends and Its Foes (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1862), p 121.
Note that "those mothers who smoked regularly were 40% more likely to have autistic children," says "Smoking mothers link to autism" (BBC, 26 July 2002). "Autism is a developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and interacts with other people. People with autism cannot relate to others in a meaningful way and they also have trouble making sense of the world at large. As a result, their ability to develop friendships is impaired and they also have a limited capacity to understand other people's feelings. Autism is often also associated with learning disabilities."
Think of the tobacco lobby and tobacco pushers as shooters, shooting at tin cans, or tires. (Those cans, or tires, represent the brain). Think of the bullets hitting those cans, or tires, like carbon monoxide, nicotine, radioactive particles, smashing and crashing on through, in one side, out the other!! Visualize the contents leaking out. Visualize the words "destruction," éclatement (tire blowout), the words doctors have used to describe tobacco effects on the brain. This can-shooting word picture is more descriptive than the standard anti-drug pictures/videos of an egg in a frying pan, with someone somberly announcing words to this effect, 'this is your brain on drugs.' (Such ads are part of the tobacco taboo, typically refusing to cite the typical tobacco role in drugs and brain damage.)
Truly it was said in 1889, "The action of the brain is impaired thereby, the ability to think, and in fact all mental concentration is weakened. . . . John Powers, 11 years of age, was taken to the insane asylum at Orange Farm today a raving maniac, caused by excessive cigarette smoking," in the 11 April 1889 Committee Report to the Michigan House of Representatives.
Smoking foreseeably worsens psychiatric conditions, confuses and clouds reasoning, and treatment for it, and impairs mental health, say P. Newhouse and J. Hughes in "The role of nicotine and nicotinic mechanisms in neuropsychiatric disease," 86 British Journal of Addiction 521-526 (1991).
Eliminate the cause; the effect disappears. "Sublatâ causa, tollitur effectus: Otez la cause, l'effet disparaît."—Dr. Hippolyte Adéon Depierris, Physiologie Sociale (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p 328. "Avant le . . . tabac, la folie était une maladie très rare dans l'humanité," Depierris, Physiologie Sociale, supra, p 346. Before tobacco, mental disorder was a rare malady among humans. (The foregoing helps explain why our 19th century ancestors banned the manufacture and sale of tobacco products such as cigarettes, in, e.g., Iowa, Tennessee, and Michigan, to prevent the disproportionate cause of mental illness. They knew that the afflicted addicts can often not help themselves, and simply stop. "It takes a village. . . . ")
Recall that with scurvy, doctors knew WHO was suffering the effects; they did not know WHY until two centuries later, with the discovery of vitamins. Here, doctors observed smokers' brain dysfunction due to carbon monoxide, and a second reason for the bleeding in the brain (radioactivity) became known a century later.
The massive quantities of carbon monoxide (500-1500 ppm) result in an impaired oxygen supply to the brain, i.e., "cerebral anoxia," cell by cell, year after year, and when to any cell, "the oxygen supply is cut off, then damage to neurones occurs after a few minutes. Some neurones die." Anthony Hopkins, Epilepsy: the facts (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
This obective medical data refutes the myth that smoking is merely a "habit." Officially, that myth was refuted long ago. Myths die hard; there are some people who still think the earth is flat!! even though that myth was also refuted long ago.
Tobacco is an addiction, not a habit, see Ronald M. Davis, M.D., (a health authority during Gov. John Engler's first term), "The Language of Nicotine Addiction: Purging the Word 'Habit' From Our Lexicon," 1 Tobacco Control 163-164 (1992), opposing the "Big Tobacco" myth that smoking is merely a habit.
"Smokers show the same attitude to tobacco as addicts to their drug, and their judgment is therefore biased in giving an opinion of its effect on them." Lennox Johnston, "Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine," 243 The Lancet 742 (19 December 1942). Tobacco-induced brain damage explains this long-observed adverse impact on smokers' reasoning.
"Most psychiatrists have noted that there is a higher frequency of smoking in their patients than in a general population." See the DHEW NIDA book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, p 5 (December 1977), supra.
Seventy-four percent (74%) of schizophrenics smoke, whereas only 25% of the general population smokes, Glassman, A, "Cigarette Smoking and Implications for Psychiatric Illness," 150 Am J Psychiatry (#4) 546-553 (1993).
Smokers are disproportionately mentally ill significantly more than nonsmokers; among smokers, the most common mental disorder is schizophrenia, Kitch, D, "Editorial: Where There's Smoke . . . Nicotine and Psychiatric Disorders," 30 Biol Psychiatry 107-108 (1991).
Due to their brain dysfunction, anosognosia, smokers do not recognize these propensities in themselves, nor respond to normal stimuli such as warnings that smoking is dangerous. Such data is consistent with that on "those persons who are psychotic (insane in the legal sense of the term) . . . sufffering from a real derangement . . . so severe 'that they do not respond to and are not motivated by normal stimuli,'" Lyle Tussing, Psychology for Better Living (New York: Wiley Pub, 1959), p 345.
So within two years, Michigan acted, with a law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216 that bans cigarettes, but the public does not know that either. Nor that Michigan Governor Engler and staff have been supportive of action to enforce that law, issuing five pertinent memoranda:
Over the years, a number of nonsmokers have asked smokers not to smoke in their presence. Such nonsmokers were unaware of smokers' mental disorder. So the smoker reaction to them has often been hostile. In essence, the reaction of a metally disordered person to such a request, is to react with hostility, as they feel that they can do whatever they please.
The above-cited Dr. James Tracy in 1917 described smokers' mental disorder leading to that typical reaction, as tantamount to insane delusions of grandeur, leading to the belief of no need to respond politely to polite requests.
Smokers tragically do receive as a result of exposure to cigarettes' vast toxic chemicals a disproportionate amount of brain deterioration such as Alzheimers' disease and mental disorder. So as hostility to control is a typical symptom of the this type of mental disorder, smokers do typically react as various nonsmokers have experienced. The web writer has personally observed the same.
In fact, smokers' behavior of this type has been so widespread as to have been published repeatedly. Here are just a a few of the many examples that can be found at any good law library.
Mentally disordered smokers can indeed be quite dangerous, cause fires, kill nonsmokers, etc. See, for example, the lawsuit of Rum River Lumber Co v State of Minnesota, 282 NW2d 882 (Minn, 1979). An insane smoker had escaped from the St. Peter's mental hospital. A pyromaniac, he then proceeded to set fire to an area lumber yard!! The destroyed lumber yard sued the mental hospital operated by the State, for negligence in letting the mentally ill smoker escape!! When such smokers are allowed to run loose, said the lumber yard in court, they are likely to cause fires; so it is negligent to let such foreseeably dangerous mentally disordered smokers escape. The jury agreed, and told the state to pay for the damages that arose from the asylum's negligence in letting the insane smoker escape. The state mental hospital appealed to the State Supreme Court. But since smoker's known disproportionate mental disorder and dangerousness, including their causing fires disproportionately, is medical fact, the state lost the appeal.
In the case of Commonwealth v Hughes, 468 Pa 502; 364 A2d 306 (1976), Hughes started a fire at a chemical factory. Firemen trying to put out the fire were killed on the job in the process of putting out the smoker-caused fire. The smoker was arrested for manslaughter in the two deaths. He appealed all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but lost. Smokers—contrary to lay beliefs—do not have a right to start fires that kill people.
In the case of Shimp v New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, 145 N J Super 516; 368 A2d 408 (1976), smoker coworkers (having been negligently hired) were bringing canisters of toxic chemicals (canisters known as cigarettes) onto company property, and spraying the toxic chemicals into the air, including impacting their nonsmoker coworkers. The company allowed this, except on the company telephone equipment!! Mrs. Shimp politely asked them to cease and desist. They refused. So Mrs. Shimp requested a poison control / nuisance abatement injunction to get herself treated as having at least the same rights as inanimate phone equipment. She won an injunction. Employers must treat nonsmoker humans no less well than employer equipment.
A nearly identical case is that of Paul Smith v Western Electric Co, 643 SW2d 10 (Mo App, 1982).
In another case of a smoker committed to a state mental hospital, the smoker was violating the no smoking rule, causing a hazard. In that case, the state hospital workers were careful (unlike those in the Minnesota case, supra) to not be negligent, not let the smoker cause a hazard. They forcibly restrained the mentally disordered smoker (Mr. Jacobs). He thereupon sued, charging the workers with assault and battery. Their defense was, they were preventing the mentally disordered smoker from causing harm! . (Prevention is better than waiting until your place is burned down, or you are killed!) The court dismissed the smoker's case pursuant to the legal doctrine of "sovereign immunity." The case is Jacobs v State of Michigan Mental Health Department, 88 Mich App 503; 276 NW2d 627 (1979).
The bottom line is that governments and constitutions were established, generally speaking, to protect the public from violence such as unlawful killings and arson. As long as cigarette controls are not enforced, incidents of fires and deaths do arise. The resultant litigation, except in the amazing Jacobs case, shows that smokers' doing harm is typically not prevented before the fact, only dealt with after it is too late, after the harm smokers had caused had already occured.
This site advocates that you write to officials urging more of them to follow the Jacobs precedent, and control smokers, and prevent smoking, before more harm is caused.
Of course, the preferable solution is a smokers' rights law such as Michigan has, a safe-cigarettes law. Please write to officials urging adoption of such a law state-wide, nation-wide, and worldwide. TCPG advocates this, but offers both alternatives here for your choice.
Especially: Our Websites on
As stated, he was not only a doctor, he also had a law degree. And he resented the fact that then psychiatric criteria defined him as insane. As a lawyer, he knew how to write, to invent allegations and fabricate arguments to convince people of the truth of a case, regardless of merit. So he resolved to do so on psychology. He became "father of psychoanalysis," acting to suppress the data on tobacco-induced addiction, mental disorder, and brain damage. He in essence committed "neologism" invention on a world scale to replace the then-known truth.
Instead of focusing on the organic aspect of mental disorder, addiction, and brain damage; instead of focusing on tobacco, he invented the notion of focusing on purported incidents from one's childhood (so-called psychotherapy)! That way, the truth about tobacco's role, well-established prior to his fraudulent invention, would be de-emphasized, even displaced.
Symptoms of mental disorder include misuse of, and disregard for, words and their meanings, even inventing words. The term is "neologism." One might called such invented words "hallucinations." This lawyer's symptom pattern/fraud included neologisms, fabricating or hallucinating so-called "psychiatric terms" that were solely the product of his own tragically disturbed mind and damgaged brain!
As a lawyer, he was an excellent salesman. He "sold" his fraud, this con, worldwide. He was so successful at his con that the then psychology was massively disrupted, never to recover. Nowadays almost nobody has heard of tobacco-induced mental disorder, tobacco-induced brain damage. (They have barely heard the most minimal data on tobacco-induced addiction!)
And almost nobody has heard of tobacco-induced brain damage and its role in crime, alcoholism, suicide, etc. But almost everybody has heard of the lawyer's invention, the neologism-induced terms, "psychotherapy," "id," "superego," etc.
The name of the lawyer inventor of the fraud that accomplished the lawyer's goal to massively disrupt, displace, censor prior knowledge about tobacco's role in mental disorder was . . . Sigmund Freud, LL.D.
Copyright © 1999 Leroy J. Pletten
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OF TOBACCO-INDUCED MENTAL DISORDERFor background on mental health costs, see e.g.,
See also total cigarettes-cost context."Nicotine is one of the most powerful of the 'nerve poisons' known. Its virulence is compared to that of prussic acid. . . . . It seems to destroy life not by attacking a few but all of the functions essential to it. . . . A significant indication of this is that there is no subsrance which can counteract its effects. . . . the use of tobacco in even the smallest amount impairs the functional action of the liver on the blood passing through it, and that the abnormal state of the blood thus caused will manifest itself by disturbance in the brain." "Thus the nerves are under the constant influence of the drug and much injury to the system results." C. W. Lyman, 48 New York Medical Journal 262-265 (8 Sep 1888).
"Heavy cigarette smokers thus appear to be true addicts, showing not only social habituation but . . . physiologic withdrawal effects. . . . concerns about the dangers of smoking, latent but readily mobilized in our population, are effectively masked by denial and related psychic defenses." A classic symptom of "severe brain damage" was evident: "distorted time perception," e.g., "time moving slowly." Thus, "our evidence at least is consistent with the existence of 'chronic intoxication' in the heavy smoker, which is harmful to the smoker himself." Peter H. Knapp, Charles M. Bliss, Harriet Wells, "Addictive Aspects in Heavy Cigarette Smoking," 119 Am J Psychiatry 966-972 (April 1963).
Kayla Bernheim, Ph.D., and Richard Lewine, Ph.D. Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatments (New York: Norton, 1979), p 24, “To date, it has not been demonstrated that the schizophrenic can be taught or coerced or convinced not to have these thoughts.”
By 1907, there was "a full . . . knowledge of the effects of tobacco on the nervous system. . . . A variety of substances have been found in tobacco aside from nicotine. Some of these are pyridin, picolin, tulidin, parvolin, collodin, rubidin, varidin; also carbolic acid and marsh gas." The result is that tobacco "registers a permanent and definite impression in nervous structures when it is used for months or years." "Tobacco is a powerful depressant to the motor or efferent nerves, acting primarily upon their peripheral filaments. . . . The sympathetic ganglia are first stimulated and then depressed by nicotine. . . . In chronic poisoning there is more or less gastroenteritis of a hemorrhagic nature. Ecchymosis occurs in the pleura and peritioneum. Hyperemia of the lungs, brain and cord is found. . . . Coarse lesions have been found in the brain and spinal cord." L. Pierce Clark, M.D., 71 Medical Record (26) 1072-1073 (29 June 1907). The above-cited DSM-III shows the rapidity of obvious symptoms, after a mere "at least several weeks."
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Geschwind N, Levitsky W, "Human Brain: Left-Right Asymmetries in Temporal Speech Region," 161 Science 186-187 (1968)
Naeser MA, and Hayward RW, "Lesion Localization in Aphasia With Cranial Computed Tomography and the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam," 28 Neurology 545-551 (1978)
Kertesz A, Harlock W, and Coates R, "Computer Tomographic Localization, Lesion Size, and Prognosis in Aphasia and Nonverbal Impairment," 8 Brain Lang 34-50 (1979)
Marshall, John C., "The New Organology," 3 The Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1) 23-25 (March 1980)
Part of the reason you may not have learned about these facts is this. There was a doctor-lawyer who, by then-established psychiatric criteria, was mentally ill. In fact, he died of his mental disorder. He typically smoked 20 cigars a day. He had tobacco induced angina (heart disease) and throat cancer. Surgery was done 33 times in an effort to save him. He suffered from tobacco-induced injury to his jaw.
And "he was in almost constant pain; often he could not speak and sometimes he could not chew or swallow," says the Oral Cancer Foundation Site on Famous Historical People. But he was so addicted, so
brain damaged, so
severely in denial, so severely mentally impaired, that, sadly, he could not stop smoking cigars, could not stop ingesting toxic chemicals. Truly, he was a tragically deranged individual, another tobacco casualty among the tens of millions.
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