hat smoking counteracts the decrease in efficiency that typically occurs in boring, monotonou's situations, and that smokers impro-ved their performance in complex choace situations while smoking. There is a growing body of evidence that nicotine can produce a tranquilizing effect during high emotional and shock situations, whil'e on the other hand stimulating con:cen.tration in tedious situations.

None of which proves that smoking may not cause cancer or other illnesses. But, as the late Compton Maekenzie wrote, "If cigarettes vanished from. ihe earth today, I believe the world would go to war again within a comparatively short time."

An extravaga.nt exaggeration, perhaps. But certainly tempers would be shorter, nastier and more brufiah.

Yours faithfully,

Winston fletcher

2.Is Smoking a Bad Habit?

1, a casual smokery always wonder if smoking is really a bad habit. If it is, why does our country produce such a large riumber of cigarettes every year? (As you know, Chi.na is the largsst cigarette producing country in the world. ) If it is,. why do so many girls adrnire handsome boys with a cigarette on their lip?

My friends tell me, "Smoking is a waste of money, a cause of disease..." Admittedly, these reasons frighten some people into giving up smoking, but can you ensure that non-smokers will live long without dying in an epidemic or getting killed by a drunken driver? Can you say it is not a waste of money for most non-smokers habitually to spend a lot of money on snacks?

In my opinion, smoking is only an amusement, like playing cards, reading, etc. Many years ago, when an adult handed me a cigarette and lit it for me, I felt grown up. When I am with friends and have nothing to say, we smoke, consequently we no longer feel embarrassed.

Sometimes, I light a cigarette, watching my loneliness, suffering and nervousness vanishing with the smoke, I can't help saying inwardly: Hello, cigarette, my old friend, I' m coming to meet you again.

3. Smokers of the World, Unite

It can scarcely have escaped the notice of thinking men, I think, being a thinking man myself, that the forces of darkness opposed to those of us who like a quiet smoke are gathering momentum daily and starting to throw their weight about more somewhat. Every morning I read in the papers a long article by another of those doctors who are the spearhead of the movement. Tobacco, they say, plugs up the arteries and lowers the temperature of the body extremities, and if you reply that you like your arteries plugged up and are all for having the temperature of your body extremities lowered, especially during the summer months, they bring up that cat again.

The cat to which I allude is the one that has two drops of nicotine placed on its tongue and instantly passes beyond the veil. "Iook," they say. "I place two drops of nicotine on the cat's tongue. Now watch it wilt." I can't see the argument. Cats, as Charles Stuart Calverley said, may have their goose cooked by tobacco juice, but are we to deprive ourselves of all our modest pleasures just because indulgence in them would be harmful to some cat which is probably a perfect stranger?

Take a simple instance such as occors every Saturday on the Rugby football field. The ball is heeled out, the scrum half gathers it, and instantaneously two fourteen- stone forwards fling themselves on this person, grinding him into the mud. Must we abolish Twickenham and Murrayfield because some sorry reasoner insists that if the scrum half had been a cat he would have been squashed flatter than a Dover sole? And no use, of course, to try to drive into these morons' heads that scrum halves are not cats. Really, one feels inclined at times to give it all up and turn one's face to the wall.

It is pitiful to think that that is how these men spend iheir lives, putting drops of nicotine on the tongues of cats day after day. Slavas to a habit, is th

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页