Regarding the effects of tobacco smoking on children, I think there is an aspect to this problem that is often overlooked. Granted, tobacco is extremely harmful to one's physical well-being, whether smoked directly or from second-hand sources. But perhaps there is a "third-hand" way in which tobacco is of harm to our youth. That "third-hand" is the hand of hypocrisy, and I contend that this hand may cause as much damage as the first two.
What I am basically referring to is the fact that while it is generally accepted now that tobacco is an addictive, fatal substance, it is not only still legal everywhere, but is actually subsidized by the government. So with one hand we condemn smoking, especially by children; with the other hand we are promoting the growing and selling of tobacco. Are we really aware of the effect this two-faced policy has on the young people that we want to convince not to use tobacco?
There is a story about Mahatma Gandhi that illustrates part of this problem,
which is the disempowerment of our good intentions:
One day a woman came to Gandhi with her young son, and asked him to tell her son not to eat sugar. Gandhi told her to come back in three days. She did not understand this, but agreed to the terms, and three days later she brought her son back to Gandhi, who then said to her son, "Stop eating sugar." The mother then asked Gandhi why he had made her wait three days, and he said "Three days ago, I myself was still eating sugar." What Gandhi understood was that our words have no power unless they are backed up by the truth. It is basically useless to try to tell someone to do something that you yourself are unwilling to do. We as a society are doing just that. We are trying to tell people, young and old, that tobacco is harmful and should not be used, while we advertise the product and resist all efforts to halt its manufacture and distribution.
The other side of this coin is the fact that we put people in prison for using or selling substances that are far less dangerous than tobacco. Even if you disagree that smoking marijuana is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, there is certainly far more scientific evidence of tobacco's harm than there is for marijuana. Until we are treating all such substances equally, we fall into the same disempowering trap. I still remember discussions with my mother in the 1960's, when, with a cigarette in her mouth, she tried to tell me how bad it was to smoke pot. "Not as bad as what you are smoking," I would say, and the discussion usually ended right there. And the same discussion the whole country is having ends right there as well. It is not an exaggeration to say that perhaps the largest reason for the failure of the "War on Drugs" is the widespread acceptance and promotion of tobacco (and alcohol). We cannot be telling kids to "Just say no" when we have been showing them by example that it's OK to say yes.
Richard Klein