Tobaccodeadly no matter what
By Bonnie Vierthaler
Photo: ImagineChina

今天(5月31日)是第19个世界无烟日.今年无烟日的主题是“烟草吞噬生命”.本文的作者,来自美国的Bonnie Vierthaler 是一个有20年历史的“反烟斗士”,目前在厦门大学任教.在其倡导下,上周六,厦门大学漳州校区举行了无烟日签名活动,得到了众多师生的支持.同时,厦门大学漳州校区也宣布它将成为中国第一个“无烟校区”.
Secondhand smoke, even a little, even outdoors, is dangerousthaler 是一个有2In China, smoking cigarettes is the most prevalent form of tobacco use, but in other parts of the world, people use tobacco in many different forms, all of them deadly.
The theme for World No Tobacco Day 2006, “Tobacco: Deadly in any Form or Disguise,” teaches us that no matter what the form of tobacco (cigarettes, cigars, pipes, chewing tobacco), it’s all deadly. The nicotine in any form of tobacco is always addictive.
Because many countries around the world are cutting down on tobacco use, the tobacco companies are looking for new customers, to rescue their declining profits. They’re tapping new markets in new countries like China. They try to disguise the harmfulness of their products with names that give the illusion of being safer, like “mild”, “light”, or “low tar”. They’re also adding intriguing brand names and flavors to capture the attention of young people. And it’s working! In China, more young people, even girls, are getting hooked.
It used to be that people didn’t die from smoking until they were older, but today young people are dying from things like cancer and heart disease in their 20s, 30s and 40s — even people who have never smoked!

Dying of old age
Did you ever meet anyone who died of old age? I did. His name was Scott Nearing. He was a professor at Princeton University. In the prime of his life, he and his wife Helen, a concert violinist, moved to the country. They built their own home of natural materials and developed new methods of organic gardening. They were the pioneers of the back to the land movement. They wrote many books about living in harmony with nature, encouraging and teaching others how to do the same. (Does it need saying that they didn’t smoke or drink?)
I met Scott when he was in his late 90s. He was still chopping wood, carrying buckets of water, and writing books. Little by the little the growth process reversed itself. He lost his hair and his teeth, and he needed help changing his clothes. He passed away three weeks after his 100th birthday. No pain, no doctors, and no exorbitant hospital bills.
On the other hand, my parents and all their friends were deeply entrenched in the society that the Nearings rejected: smoking and drinking and lots of parties. They were wonderful, kind people, but they had all become addicted to tobacco and alcohol. Some of them overcame their addictions, but usually it was too late. I watched my parents and their friends die agonizing deaths from horrible diseases. Their final days were spent painfully alone in hospitals and their medical bills often crippled their families for years to come.
I grew up with all of the excuses you hear from tobacco addicts, including “well, we all have to die from something,” implying that it was necessary to die from some dreaded disease. They believed it because that’s all they saw. They didn’t know back then about the harmfulness of smoking and drinking. It was just what everybody did. It was part of the culture. It was difficult to refuse — just as I’m finding it is in China today.

No need to suffer
Today, every day, science is producing more and more studies showing us that nicotine is highly addictive and that the tar produced by tobacco smoke is at root of most of our modern day diseases. Even secondhand smoke is terribly dangerous, even just a little, and even outdoors. It’s far worse that anyone ever imagined. Many people who have never smoked in their lives are suffering and dying from smokers’ diseases because of secondhand smoke.
When it comes to addressing the problem of tobacco smoke pollution (secondhand smoke), the US and many other countries are about 30-50 years ahead of China. We know that smokers are nicotine addicts and many resources are available to help them overcome their addictions.
Many laws have been passed to protect the innocent from tobacco smoke pollution. In fact, whole cities and even countries are going smoke free, indoors and out. Smoking around children is being prohibited, especially in cars and in homes. In a divorce, children are usually given to the smoke free parent. The necessity of breathing clean air outweighs anyone’s desire to satisfy a tobacco addiction.
China doesn’t have to go through those 30-50 years of agonizing illnesses and unnecessary poverty. We can move quickly to go smoke free and catch up with the rest of the smokefree countries. We can prevent 30-50 years of needless suffering.
Tomorrow is Children’s Day. Let's go smoke free for the children. Let's give the children good health and a chance to die of old age.

XMU goes smoke free

Last Saturday, May 27, on the Zhangzhou Campus, Xiamen University (including the Tan Kah Kee College), became the first major university in China to publicly declare its intention to go smoke free. The Green Breathing Association at Xiamen University leads the way in the campaign.
Amidst banners, posters, television cameras, and hundreds of signatures, students took a break from their exams to express their enthusiasm for a better study environment, free from the harm of toxic tobacco smoke.
“Going smoke free will be a step-by-step process requiring careful planning, beginning with the freshmen and sophomores on the Zhangzhou campus. The main campus will follow,” said Bonnie Vierthaler, Green Breathing’s American advisor. Bonnie has 20 years of experience campaining on the tobacco issues.
Good progress should be made this summer. Bonnie will be offering 3 elective classes that will be hands-on workshops and seminars devoted to the task of going smoke free. Some teams will work to refine and implement XMU’s smoke free policies. Others will be creating TV commercials, posters, writing newspaper and magazine articles as well as doing articles and cartoons for the website, finding innovative methods for encouraging to nonsmokers to protect themselves and their loved ones.
According to Bonnie, if all goes well, by the end of the third term, they will have a smoke free plan ready for the fall and one team will have prepared a program for welcoming the first smoke free freshman class.

Vocabulary
nicotine 尼古丁[ni(2),gu(3),ding(1)]
tar 焦油[jiao(1),you(2)]
hook 上瘾[shang(4),yin(3)]
agonize 折磨[zhe(2),mo(2)]
innocent 无辜的[wu(2),gu(1),de(0)]
smoke free 无烟的[wu(2),yan(1),de(0)]