Bring back safe cigs 

FORMER neighbour Gertrude – well into her eighties and with a voice like a wood shredder due to a lifetime of heavy smoking – stunned me a few years back by asking ‘Where can I buy cigs that won’t damage my health?’  

She’d just been out to buy 40 Marlboros and was horrified to notice that her favourite brand now bore grisly health warnings. She’d slung them back at the assistant, saying she didn’t want cigarettes that were dangerous, and could she please have the old ones that were safe. I explained to Gertrude that cigarettes had always posed a health threat, but it was only in 2008 that the UK government insisted that graphic warnings be put on the packets. 
 
Bullpucky,’ she wheezed. Then, after a lengthy coughing fit, added ‘I can remember the days when doctors recommended smoking and even prescribed them for asthma sufferers.’  
While I did recall seeing vintage ads depicting doctors and dentists endorsing various brands I thought Gertrude’s fags-for-asthmatics claim was pure fantasy. Boy, was I ever wrong! 
 
I fact-checked her claim and found an article in the US National Library of Medicine that informed me that ‘throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the inhalation of fumes from burning preparations of stramonium, lobelia, tobacco, and potash became increasingly popular amongst asthmatics and their physicians throughout the world.’ 
 
One renowned asthma sufferer was French novelist Marcel Proust, who, after trying a variety of cures and even changing his diet, could get no relief – until he began smoking asthma cigarettes. So delighted was he that in 1901 he wrote to his mum to say he’d finally found something that actually worked. 
 
The article went on to say ‘it is interesting to reflect that until the twentieth-century doctors paid little attention to smoking as a health hazard, preferring instead to emphasize the perceived health benefits of tobacco and other inhaled substances, and that medicated cigarettes marketed for respiratory complaints continued to be endorsed, and smoked, by doctors until well after the Second World War.’ 
 
When I was 21, after having had my tonsils removed by a leading South African ear, nose and throat specialist, the first thing I did after regaining consciousness was to light a Lucky Strike. But I hurriedly stubbed it out when I saw the surgeon enter the ward.  
 
‘No need to do that, dear boy’ he said, ‘smoking is great for the throat. Do you mind if I have one of yours?’  
A couple of years later lung cancer ushered him into an early grave and I gave up the habit – until vaping came along. 

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Written by

Barry Duke

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