The history of cigareettes and German and the decision to quit.
Strain marked the face reflected in the mirror. Besides newly acquired crow's feet, the two lines running like brackets from nose to mouth had grown deeper, and the skin had a yellow-gray hue like aging newspapers. "You look terrible," my friend Kurt told me with frankness born of a long friendship. I hadn't been smoking that long, in fact, but the effect was dramatic. My face had none of the ruddy vitality of cowboys herding cattle in a southwestern sunset, as in the ads for my favored brand of cigarettes. My teeth had turned the color of old ivory. My lungs felt full every morning, giving out a slight wheeze until, obscenely, I lit a cigarette. © The Discovery Channel "Waiting to Inhale" After a ten-year hiatus, I turned to tobacco during a difficult period in my life, hoping to stop as soon as the storm passed. Cigarettes, as any smoker will tell you, make you feel protected and seem to whittle away life's asperities. It was amazing how quickly the addiction took hold. Within a few weeks, I was smoking 30 to 40 cigarettes per day. The ritual of removing the cigarette from the pack, lighting and sucking on it, even stubbing it out, became as important as the smoke itself. Smoking, says Oscar Wilde, is the perfect pleasure: "It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied." Others are more blunt: "Experts in the field of substance abuse," says a World Health Organization report, "consider tobacco dependence to be as strong or stronger than dependence on such substances as heroin and cocaine." SMOKE ON THE RISE Ever since the Spanish brought tobacco back from the New World, authorities have been suspicious about its effects, though Old World medicine men initially thought it might be useful. Rumor had it that tobacco was a prophylactic against the Plague, and for a while the young boys at Eton received daily inhalations. Cardinal Richelieu's profitable take on tobacco is still on the books: impose a high tax on it to discourage smoking while, at the same time, earning a tidy sum. As in much of Europe and the U.S., tobacco use in Germany really took off during the industrial revolution, presumably as a means to assuage the stress of long working hours (though the cannabis that some cigarettes contained might have had something to do with the attraction). In 1870, 60 million cigarettes were registered in the states that became a unified Germany one year later; by 1995, five years after reunification, the number of taxed cigarettes tallied here was 135 billion, not including self-rolls and illegal imports. Statistics are also telling when it comes to the health ravages caused by tobacco. According to the WHO, an estimated three million people die each year from tobacco-related illnesses, which include everything from cardiovascular failures to a string of cancers beginning in the oral cavity and ending at the bladder. That number is expected to rise to 10 million by the first quarter of the 21st century, with the developing countries representing the future of the industry (India and China are considered the most promising markets). The Western industrialized nations, for their part, are gradually giving up smoking. The bellwether in the fight against smoking has been America, the world's second largest producer of tobacco (after China). Ironically, it is also the country with the most pervasive smoking mystique: the Wild West, adventure, maturity, fearlessness, "cool" - all are images used time and again by cigarette advertisers to give their product appeal. Not only have severe prohibitions been enacted in the U.S., but they're enforced, either by officials or vociferous nonsmokers. You can't smoke in trains, subway stations, restaurants, hotel lobbies, or even in your own office. The attitude in Germany is far more tolerant towards smokers and far less so for nonsmokers. The Nichtraucher Tisch (nonsmoking section) in a restaurant is likely to be surrounded by smoking tables, and sometimes you'll even find ashtrays on them. Café owners are afraid that antismoking measures are bad for business. Yet "only" 22.9 percent of Germans above 10 years-of-age smokes, and a mere 3.8 percent are categorized as heavy smokers (i.e. 20 cigarettes or more per day). Are nonsmoking clientele a potential source of income? Munich's Hauswerk Projekt, an alternative cultural center, has a smoke-free café called Wildwuchs that's open when events are held at the center. Smoking was reintroduced for a time in the front room, but the ban was reimposed. "It made no difference in our turnover," says Else Buchner, who runs the project. "And clients and workers alike didn't like it when their hair and clothes stank." Nevertheless, in Germany cigarettes still have a certain mystique as a source of inspiration and creative genius. The local Kneipen and cafés are filled to the brim with men and women changing the world, showing off, or philosophizing about love and family, waving glowing cigarettes at each other like magic wands. The brand you smoke might also say something about who you are. The smoker of black-tobacco Gauloises, for example, is an intense thinker and seducer with an obvious death wish. Luckies are the soldier's cigarette: you're tough, freewheeling (especially good if combined with a Jeep) and good-humored. As a firm believer in the independent spirit of eastern Germany, you might subject your throat to the flue-brush feeling of a Karo, and if you're really good you'll open the box with one quick squeeze. POLITICAL FIRE After years of passivity, Europe finally seems to be mobilizing against smoking, if somewhat more nonchalantly than in the U.S. A few years ago, France prohibited smoking in cafés, an extraordinary move considering the traditional trinity of cafés, calvados and Gauloises. Germany, too, is moving on several fronts. The push for more severe warnings on cigarette packaging last year went all the way to the supreme court; the judges argued that "smoking kills more people than traffic accidents, AIDS, alcohol, illegal drugs, murder and suicide combined," and ruled against the tobacco industry. Passive smoking is also gradually emerging on the agenda. A proposed law protecting nonsmokers, especially in the work place, is being debated in the Bundestag, and a decision is expected at the end of this year. "COOL KIDS CAN WAIT" In November 1996, the conference of German health ministers threatened to ban cigarette ads if the industry failed to demonstrate willingness to match every Deutsche Mark spent on advertising with one for "activities promoting health." Bavaria's health minister, Barbara Stamm, a vocal critic of the industry, has proposed having cigarette dispensers removed from areas around schools and other youth institutions; the plan is likely to be enacted, especially since American tobacco company the Liggett Group admitted last month that it has long known of the addictiveness and health hazards of smoking, and has consciously marketed to young people anyway. Research has shown that most smokers pick up the habit in adolescence, but if teens make it to adulthood without smoking, they stand little chance of ever becoming smokers. No wonder, then, that the bulk of cigarette ads address the young. As for the German Association of Cigarette Manufacturers, it has started a campaign that subtly promotes smoking in the guise of discouraging it: "Cool kids can wait" is the catch phrase of their most recent attempt to win the lungs of German youth. These ads portray hip teens saying "I don't want to smoke - yet." Barbara Stamm has already announced her intention of taking legal steps against the campaign, which she considers particularly insidious. "The message is that young people should begin smoking soon," she recently said. "For example, when they reach the age of 16." Ask young people here why they smoke, however, and the answer you get is either a blank look or an "I don't know." Julie, 17, raises her left fist and cries "No future!" a telling comment on the difficulties of growing up nowadays. Her older sister shrugs and says: "Well I was going through some rough emotional stuff... ." Christian, 12, who puffs away with friends while leaning on his mountain bike is simply bored; the way he looks at his older friend tells the tale of peer pressure. The government's antismoking message is being spread through special programs in schools and, for example, by requiring the industry to project full-screen warnings after cigarette ads in the cinema; but nowhere does one find antismoking billboards. The reason, says Anton Haußmann, press spokesman for the German Ministry of Health, is that billboard advertising is simply too expensive. No different than in Cardinal Richelieu's day, smoking is still a significant source of government income. In Germany, 75 percent of the price of every pack goes to the government. In 1995, cigarettes amounted to DM 20.6 billion in tax revenue (the 15 percent VAT came to another DM 4.6 billion). And while the government combats tobacco addiction with one hand, it forks out subsidies (nearly DM 6 million in Bavaria alone two years ago) to tobacco farmers with the other. SMOKERS, ANON The government's role aside, however, what will ultimately reduce smoking is individual willpower. Every quitter has their own story. My father, a three-packs-per-day man, went to a hypnotist. A friend of mine took deep breaths of his ashtray each morning until the mere thought of cigarettes made him ill. My own decision was governed by finances: DM 3,000 per year, not to speak of the time it took to "have a cigarette break" thirty times every day, was simply ridiculous. Yes, all the withdrawal symptoms struck- nervousness, irritability, hunger, headaches - and even as I write, my mind hangs on to a phantom cigarette. My only tips to those taking the plunge are to simultaneously quit the two other friends of cigarettes: coffee and alcohol. Forsake your favorite Kneipe for a few months, avoid political discussions and friends who smoke. Live in harmony with your partner. Go for plenty of walks in the fresh air and sunlight. Just do it.