My Doctor Recommends Camel

The demon nicotine

On November 21 in 1989, George HW Bush signed a law banning the smoking of cigarettes on planes.

It was still a few years before smoking was banned on international flights. I had already given up smoking in 1985 a year after my first daughter was born. My wife gave up when we found out she was pregnant, and my smoking from then on was outside the house. That made it easier to give up.

I have a history with tobacco. I was the leading hand on a tobacco plantation for a couple of years in Motueka, working at all stages from planting to picking and loading the kiln.

That’s me on the farm offering someone a Winfield 25 as we were weeding around the tobacco plants

I used to laugh when I saw the Camel advertisement on the back of magazines. We didn’t get TVCs like this in New Zealand, but I remember my doctor, who delivered my first daughter, well respected in the field of antenatal, used to smoke, even in his surgery. My response was that if it was OK for me too, then go ahead.

You may have read in a previous post, that I learned to smoke in a bunker in the sand dunes behind my grandparents’ home in Holland. That was when I was 13. I was a casual smoker back then. I probably smoked 2-3 rollies a week. I didn’t have to worry about them finding out, because my grandfather smoked a pipe and cigars inside the house daily, which smelled a lot stronger than any odor that lingered on my clothes from my Drum shag.

Coming back to New Zealand, I was to become a quiet rebel, and at High School, my smoking grew to 2 or 3 cigarettes a day. Both my parents smoked, although my mother quit not long after.

My father bought me a pipe in an attempt to offer me a less harmful way of smoking, and I tried it for a couple of years, and while I liked the smell of pipe tobacco, smoking it, even without inhaling, made me feel a bit queasy.

My grandfather who I had lived with for the last 2 years used to send me boxes of high-quality Dutch and Cuban cigars, which I had been allowed occasionally when I lived there, on the promise I would not inhale. I certainly enjoyed those. I still have one of the empty boxes and a large collection of cigar bands, which my grandfather and I both saved.

My grandfather, Pake, taught me how to light a piece of cedar with my match and then light the cigar with the cedar so that the sulfur from the match wouldn’t contaminate the flavor of the cigar.

Holts Cigar Co showing how to light a cigar

In my post, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It, I wrote about my unhappiness with being forced to go to a school that had no music classes, the one thing I was seriously passionate about. I have a very high IQ, which I will discuss in the future, and learning was easy for me, meaning I pretty much didn’t have to pay attention in class, and I would still get high results in my exams, just through reading the books and cramming at the last minute.

At the back of the field at school, you could often find me smoking with my mates, and even at times with the odd teacher. They were either at the back of the field to catch us, or to ‘bum a smoke’ from us if they had run out.

The only other place they were able to smoke was in the staff room, and one teacher in particular who I later became friends with, hated the politics of the staff room and would often join us discretely. I remember days when my mates had to share a smoke, and we would “suck the guts out of it” so that it became red hot, sometimes the tar would drip out of the end. Pretty gross, huh?

Ironically the time I got into the most trouble for smoking, I was innocent. There was a prefect who lived near me in Titirangi who didn’t like me. He had been a school bully in the years prior to becoming a prefect and didn’t like me then, and now he had power.

After school one day, I had gotten changed out of my school uniform and he saw me smoking outside the shops in Titirangi village. He told me I wasn’t allowed to smoke because I was underage. I was 15. I told him I could do what I like in my own time outside of school.

The following morning I was called to the principal’s office and Ian Sage, the deputy principal told me it had been reported to him that I had been seen smoking in Titirangi IN school uniform. I denied it, and told the DP I knew who it was, and why he reported me, but it was his word against the word of a prefect.

So the next thing I know I am standing bent over a device that I had to hold on to, it was a bit like the special seats they had in shoe shops to fit new shoes. Savage went to a cupboard and looked at his collection of canes to decide which one to use, got out one that he thought would teach me a lesson, while my English teacher, who I got on with well, was called in to witness, as I got 3 of the best. I reckon he had more tears in his eyes than I did. Sitting down wasn’t comfortable for the rest of that day.

What did I learn? That there are people who have power, who can lie through their teeth, and will be believed over the innocent. The irony is that there were dozens of times when I did smoke in school uniform, mostly at school, that I got away with. The time I got punished, I was not in school uniform and had done nothing wrong.

I wasn’t going to cry, in fact, I almost never cry. My father taunted me as a kid, out of crying after getting a hiding from him, which is a story for another day. I almost never cry, except happy tears when listening to some amazing music, or when someone in my family makes me immensely proud.

I spent my last year of high school at the Auckland Alternative School, where we were allowed to smoke (and grow our hair). This was me aged 16 at a school camp.

I continued to smoke for several years. My youngest aunt used to send me shag tobacco from Holland. Drum, Bison, Rider, and other brands you couldn’t get in New Zealand, which were much nicer than the British brands you could buy in the shops here, like Pocket Edition.

I had to smoke ‘roll your own’ most of the time because ‘tailor-mades’ were too expensive unless you smoked cheap rubbish like Navy Cut, which came in packs of ten, that we often bought if it was our turn to shout on the field. The reason for doing this was that it meant only one or two of us would have cigarettes in our bags at the odd time when a teacher would order a search. Loose cigarettes would often get bent, squashed or the filter might break off when they were ‘hidden’ in the lining of your shorts, pushed through a little tear at the bottom of your pocket,

I love this song from Morgan Wade. It reminds me of the fun I had back in the day, playing in bands, cigarette in my mouth, maybe in a cigarette holder, or pushed onto the end of one of my guitar strings at the top of the guitar neck so I could grab it for a toke when I wanted to.

“You said you hate the smell of cigarette smoke
You only used to smoke when you drank”

I smoked for about 15 years and decided that I wanted to be around with sufficient energy for my kids as they were growing up. I was addicted and it took me a few go’s to give up. On occasion I would find myself putting a smoke out in a pub, not having remembered being given one, or lighting it. I have to say that I enjoyed smoking. I liked the flavor, the deep inhales, the slow release watching the smoke come out of your mouth. The act combined with the nicotine was relaxing.

Later in life, I would see the damage that tobacco did, when my father got emphysema and asbestosis, and when my father-in-law got throat cancer and had to speak through a stoma.

Russ, my father-in-law with his thumb in his stoma so that he could talk

My father-in-law, Russ, became president of the Auckland Lost Chord Club and learned to speak through his stoma, a valve in his throat. He helped and counseled people after their surgery removing their voice box and helping them learn how to speak again. It was a very traumatic experience for most people.

He did countless visits to primary schools and let kids see inside his neck, explaining how smoking gave him cancer. He was encouraged and taught to smoke, while serving in the Pacific, in the Air Force in WWII. The military had known for centuries that smoking helped the troops relax and they were supplied with tobacco as part of their kit. Russ received dozens if not hundreds of letters from school kids, including my girls, saying they would never smoke, as a consequence of his sharing his devastating experience.

This quote from Christopher Columbus, one of the men credited with introducing tobacco from South America and Cuba, says it all really. They already knew it was addictive 500 years ago!

“men with half-burned wood in their hands and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, like those the boys make on the day of the Passover of the Holy Ghost; and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb, or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue. These, muskets as we will call them, they call tabacos. I knew Spaniards on this island of Española who were accustomed to take it, and being reprimanded for it, by telling them it was a vice, they replied they were unable to cease using it. I do not know what relish or benefit they found in it.”

I can’t say I really regret smoking because I enjoyed it, the act, the social environment, the flavour, and the way it made me feel relaxed. I did know that if I continued smoking I would jeopardize my health and potentially that of my children, so I gave up earlier than most. Even 37 years after I gave up smoking, there are many times that I feel I would like to have a cigarette, but I won’t.

Rounding out the story, smoking was eventually banned on planes. One of the last flights I took was a JAL flight, I can’t remember if it was to or from Japan, where people were still big smokers. They had a smoking section at the back of the plane, and I remember the smoke wafting from the back to the front of the cabin where I was sitting, and arriving at my destination with my clothes smelling of stale tobacco smoke. As a smoker, I had a diminished sense of smell, and couldn’t tell that my clothes smelled of tobacco. Back in the day when most adults smoked, I guess very few people noticed.

Did you smoke? What was your relationship with tobacco? I’d love you to leave a comment.