| But our present education system has taken an uncompromising dogmatic approach to tobacco, the message is clear, �stay away from it�. I can recall being taught the detriments of smoking in public school via health class, information displays and reminded of this stance on posters in the nurse�s office and phys-ed, including one of my favorites, a wrinkled-prune-faced-old-man clutching a cigarette and beneath him the caption �Smoking is glamorous�. Despite the rigorous case against tobacco, smoking amongst the youth is not at a decrease. According to marketing magazine �In 1996-97, Health Canada estimated that nationally 29% of young adults were smoking, up from 27% in 1994.� Youth are not daft and know something is amiss in the teachings and propaganda when they see the �negative� product openly marketed at their local store, cigarette companies sponsoring sports, fashion and arts festivals, and most profoundly, members of their own family who partake of the substance. Compare this system with another; where through an intimate-holistic-social-setting, youth were schooled through Shamen or Elders about the usage of not only tobacco, but other substances including intoxicants. The youth were informed where the substance came from, it�s background, what it does, proper dosages and the occasion to consume it. �His pipe is his constant companion through life-his messenger of peace; he pledges his friends through its stem and its bowl, and when its care-drowning fumes cease to flow, it takes a place with him in his solitary grave with his tomahawk and war-club companions to his long fancied �happy hunting grounds.�(pg. 141)� This approach of teaching the public (notice how I say public and not consumers) would imply a trust in people to be mature enough to make their own informed decisions. By inform, I also mean for the informants to be honest about the detriments and benefits of tobacco, not �Smoking can kill you�. Perhaps we can even grant individuals something rare, the opportunity to treat the environment and what one consumes with reverence. It is difficult to abuse something one reveres. The closest analogy our society has to informed consumption is when the age minimum is reached-when one is old enough to legally buy and consume tobacco. As if through some magical or instinctive process we will become conscientious users of this powerful medicinal substance. The importance of this was not driven home until I encountered a Native Indian who suffered alcohol poisoning and spoke through blistered lips, �even when we are weak, we are strong�, then showed me how to beseech mercy from the �Great Spirit� through an offering of tobacco. In closing, I offer a fragment of an anonymously written poem which gives us a mortality message on the consumption of tobacco of a different sort, �The ashes that are left behind Do serve to put us all in mind That unto dust return we must; Think of this when you smoke tobacco. The smoke that does so high ascend Shews us man�s life must come to an end, The vapor�s gone-man�s life is done; Think of this when you smoke tobacco. (pg. 109)� |
| "Think of this when you smoke tobacco" by i. khider |
| 1. Thorson. Principles Of Native American Spirituality Great Britain: Thorson, 1996. 2. West, George Arbor. Tobacco, pipes and smoking customs of the American Indians... Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970. 3. Kohane, Jack Marketing June 14, Vol. 104 no. 23 1999 pg.11-12. 4. Billings, E. R. Tobacco; its history, varieties, culture, manufacture and... Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., 1875. 5. See above. |
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