It all began as a young child, being reared in a typical middle class home during the lean years while WW2 raged in Europe and Asia. Our country went all out to support the troops and the war effort as a whole. Rationing of many basics, even cigarettes, became a way of life. Millions of cartons of “Camels,” “Lucky Strikes,” “Chesterfields,” “Pall Malls”and other brands were sent free to the servicemen while the civilians adjusted to shortages. In the early 40’s, the cigarette industry was a big business, a form of “harmless recreation”, a “treat” and “stress reliever” heavily marketed in every magazine, on radio ads, appealing to every possible age, gender, ethnic group and especially seen on movie screens. I’d be hard pressed to name a movie that didn’t feature at least several characters seen puffing away. Even Fred Astaire, the most famous singing and dancing entertainer of the 30’s and 40’s, just before or after right after one of his spectacular dancing routines, would Light Up! Who smoked in my family and how did that affect me? Well, Everyone did! Mother, Father (an educated research chemist) and both grandmothers. (My grandfathers were deceased before I was born.) They surely loved their country but by golly they quickly learned how to make their own unlimited supply of cigarettes and I was just the one to help them do so!
There was a manual machine one could buy as well as loose tobacco, and packets of very fine paper consisting of tear-off separate uniform sized sheets that had a thin bit of glue on one end of each piece. One would carefully thread the paper into the machine, place loose tobacco atop of it, and then very carefully shape this into a cigarette via a built-in roller, making sure it was full and firm, then moisten the glue-edge of the paper down to secure the finished product. Voila—one had one’s cigarette. For whatever warped reason, I was really good at making them and that become a frequent job. Now I wasn’t smoking them at that age but oh man, did I ever love the aroma of that tobacco!
Fast-forward to the early 1950’s. A pack of 20 cigarettes cost about twenty-five cents at that time and five of us in our little high school group would each contribute a nickel. I was the designator “buyer” as I looked way younger than my years due to my diminutive stature, and we would all meet up after dusk, in our high school’s dug out. Each of us got four cigarettes and thought we were we quite daring, terribly sophisticated and definitely grown up as we smoked our way thru the pack. Each time, I would purchase a different brand at a different store (ostensibly “for my older sister” and thus we each learned to develop a favorite brand. My personal favorite was a non-menthol, uniquely filtered brand, called Parliament. Eventually I of course was hooked and began to smoke at home on the QT. (Or so I thought.) Our bedroom windows were all outfitted with heavy storm windows that were installed during the winter months, and each had a small piece just above the base that could be manually opened so that one could get fresh air inside. Oh yes, I was confident enough to believe that I could close my bedroom door, light up a Parliament, kneel down in front of that window, open the slat full throttle and exhale the smoke towards the outside and never be caught. Talk about being a slow learner—just visualize the cloud of smoke that must have enveloped me and the aroma it left behind! Needless to say, I was caught very quickly and my poor Mother (whom I unfortunately delighted in challenging her authority frequently) decided to use reverse psychology on me and said “if you are going to smoke, do not do so behind my back.” Well, at fifteen, that was music to my ears and I immediately raced over to the dresser, took out my pack of cigarettes and followed her out to the sitting room where I could at last truly enjoy “a smoke”. It was the beginning of a daily love affair that lasted with me for the next fifty eight years. I smoked every imaginable brand, size, shape (English Ovals overseas), filter system, even cigarillos occasionally —more to get shock reactions than actual enjoyment. Despite the fact that as an RN and a pretty well-read individual, well aware back in the 1970’s as to just how harmful smoking was on so many levels, despite the ever rising costs along with the physical restrictions of where one could “light up”, I was probably the last of any of my friends to finally break the habit in 2010. One reason I am convinced it took me so long to take action was the fact that I rarely was ever affected physically from all that smoking. My better half was also a long time smoker and never suffered from any known ill effects until he was in his 70’s. We had stopped smoking within our home and cars years beforehand, had certainly decreased the frequency of indulging but still enjoyed the habit on a regular basis. Once he was diagnosed with COPD and was told he was a good candidate for lung surgery, he stopped smoking cold turkey prior to the surgery. I wasn’t as disciplined.
That brings me to my story of vaping. I knew I had to stop smoking for my beloved’s welfare and I began my research. I learned about E-cigarettes: an ingenious looking facsimile of a cigarette that enabled one to “smoke” but it was basically a system that heated a cartridge which released vapor. At that time, it certainly wasn’t well known and I found a place out of Miami that imported them from China. They would ship me the system and provide me with low doses of nicotine inserts that I could keep tapering down as tolerated. When operational, it actually looked like a real cigarette being white in color and the same size, had a tip that “glowed” when you inhaled, “smoke” came out of the mouth end, and it was user friendly. You were able to use it anywhere at any time as you were not really “smoking.” No bans or prohibitions were placed on them initially. There were no odors or any of the other nasty attributes of real cigarettes and within about three or four months, I was down to zero level of nicotine and could finally say I no longer craved or needed nicotine. For me, the product was a marvelous tool that served a wonderful purpose, rather than having to use medical patches or oral drugs. I was such a pacesetter!
Within a relatively short period of time, other companies found that they could make cartridges of fruit flavors without nicotine and they could be marketed to children. It was easy to get them hooked on the concept and then introduce them to nicotine. Hookah parlors sprung up—“vaping” had arrived mainstream, it was cool, it was abused, and eventually as more of these products hit the market, more research was done, until finally e-cigs were allegedly regulated and controlled by the FDA. Two years ago, a court order even upheld the ban on the continued manufacturing of fruit flavored cartridges being marketed and sold to minors. Unfortunately, it is such a multimillion dollar industry today that the FDA cannot keep up with it and E-cigs are still widely available online and in many stores, filled with a vast array of catchy fruit titles as well as nicotine. The latest is that an “artificial nicotine substance” has now been created which is going to open a whole new line of study to see if it will have the same addictive property.
Glad I’m not vaping now but at least my days of doing so were for “medicinal purposes.” In retrospect, Heaven only knows what was in my Chinese cartridges!
Cheers to Healthy Breathing!
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