Smoking: Brazil's Gift to the World

Tobacco smoking was the great indigenous legacy to civilization.
Not every cultivated person dares to affirm that tobacco was
imported from Latin America natives, to France by Jean Nicot,
hence the name nicotine. Today's cancers and emphysema are in
large part the heritage of the noble savage of our continent.

Janer Cristaldo

We have just celebrated a day of fighting smoking, a date which occasions some reflections on the subject.

A president declares, on magazine covers and the front page of the newspapers, that he is not an alcoholic. A minister, caught smoking in an area where it was prohibited, asks to be forgiven by his wife and children.

What country are we in? Brazil, of course. Which, it seems, is going to end up becoming an immense U.S.A., where drinking and smoking became sins a long time ago. We are going through an unusual moment in time.

As far as I know, in the history of Brazil, a president or minister has never been seen to apologize for drinking or smoking. It must be the Larry Rohter effect. The king has no clothes—as it once was said during the monarchy. In the republican version of the old fable, the journalist simply points his finger and says: the president drinks.

Soon the courtiers in Brasília will be whispering in the corridors of powers: "That minister smokes." We are headed, with giant steps, towards the institutionalization of the politically correct. Blacks, just because they are black, are already replacing whites in university classrooms.

The parliamentary commission investigating the sexual exploitation of children in Brazil already wants to punish sex between adults. The deputy Maria do Rosário, a gaúcha from the PT, wants to criminalize those patronizing prostitutes, in the best Yankee tradition.

"Presently there is no clear characterization of this conduct in the laws of Brazil, so that in many cases, the user is not punished", says the deputy. The governor of Rio de Janeiro wants to include classes on creationism in the curriculum, a theory that claims that the universe and life are divine creations.

And suddenly, quite suddenly, smoking has become infamous. Everything seems to indicate that we are in the midst of a revival of that 70s mentality that what is good for the U.S. is good for Brazil. The worst of it is that we only import the worst of what the United States has to offer.

According to a recent report on tobacco smoking from the American Department of Health, smoking affects practically all of the organs of the body, and causes a variety of diseases that were never previously suspected to be related to smoking, including cataracts, myeloid leukemia, and cancers of the cervix, kidneys, pancreas and stomach.

"We have known for decades that smoke is bad for health, but this report shows that the damage is even worse than we imagined," said the Secretary of Health of the US, Richard Carmona, recently.

"The toxins from cigarette smoke go every where that blood goes. I hope that this new information will help to motivate people to stop smoking and convince young people not to start."

Now, the fact that that tobacco kills is old news. But it would never occur to me to tell an adult who can read that he should stop smoking. I begin from the proposition that he knows what he is exposed to. Every person has the right to choose not only how he wants to live, but also how he wants to die.

This is not what the Nordic democracies think. The Swedish parliament approved the total prohibition of smoking in bars and restaurants beginning June 1, 2005. The Norwegian parliament beat them to the punch. It prohibited smoking beginning June 1, 2004. "Smoke here, only in salmon", says a Norwegian poster.

The two countries are following in the wake of Ireland which prohibited smoking in public places—bars, offices, hospitals, universities, public transport—in March of last year. These states decided that the citizen is incapable of deciding the way in which he prefers to die.

They seem to have forgotten that alcohol kills as well. In the seventies, Sweden prohibited drinking in bars. Now alcohol is prohibited, and tobacco prohibited. And they are already banning paid sex as well.

Like Lepers

The USA alleges that smoking costs the country $ 157 billion per annum—$ 75 billion in direct medical costs and the rest in lost productivity. I don't have figures for the costs of alcohol, but they must be similar. To prohibit tobacco and not alcohol is a stingy moralism; after all both kill and cost the state dearly.

And of course sugar is lethal as well. Just a little more daring and the militants of discomfort will end up banning chocolates. It is as if suddenly the West, in some strange fit, decided to deprive its citizens of pleasures that kill, it is true, but provide euphoria and well-being as long as life lasts.

I don't smoke. I have never smoked. Not cigarettes, not pot. But I don't like seeing smokers treated like lepers, isolated in virtual cages. In the winter in New York, I saw them frozen in the streets, temperatures below freezing, holding their butts in their bare hands, because they are not allowed to smoke in their offices.

Teachers are already demanding the Hollywood films in which there are characters who smoke be classified as films for adults only. At the Zurich airport, I saw them isolated by a rope, gathered like hounded animals, to be viewed by those passing by.

My worst experience was in a train between Rome and Florence. Since there were no seats to be had in the non-smoking car, I had to buy a seat in the car with the lepers. The concentration of smoke was such that even the smokers were feeling bad.

At a party in Rio, I saw a guest forbid cigarettes to all the other guests, just because he didn't smoke. The circle closes and intolerance reigns. Strengthened by the media, the non-smokers become people's commissars, always at the ready to denounce the abominable crime.

Tobacco smoking was the great indigenous legacy to civilization. Every cultivated person knows, but not every cultivated person dares to affirm, that tobacco was imported from Latin America, where it was consumed by the natives, to France by Jean Nicot, hence the name nicotine.

Today's cancers and emphysema—may the politically correct forgive me—are in large part the heritage of the noble savage of our continent. For some time, tobacco smoking has become a practice of poor people. According to recent research, almost 33 percent of American adults below the poverty line smoke, in contrast to 22 percent of those above the line.

We are entering another period of Prohibition. This time, it is cigarettes. Legislators, in their anti-tobacco moralism, will end up making the merchants of the illicit rich. Soon tobacco will have the same sort of cachet as marijuana or cocaine.

One cannot fight deeply rooted social practices by prohibiting them. If you want to reduce the level of tobacco smoking, it is simple. All that one needs to do is link cigarettes with poverty. Even the poor will think twice before lifting a touch of cancer to their lips. In this epoch which worships money, it is more effective to stigmatize the smoker as poor. Prohibition only increases consumption.

Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Tom Moore. Moore has been fascinated by the language and culture of Brazil since 1994. He translates from Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and German, and is also active as a musician. Comments welcome at querflote@hotmail.com.