How one terrible puff broke my family’s smoking chain

By John Toth

The Bulletin

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, at the urging of a friend, I smoked a cigarette - or at least I tried.

I was just puffing on the cigarette like it was a cigar. He encouraged me to inhale because, as he said, “that’s how it’s done. Otherwise, you’re just wasting it.”

I did, and immediately I started coughing my lungs out. I couldn’t stop. It took several minutes for me to be able to breathe again normally.

“That happens at first. You’ll get used to it.”

My friend puffed away like it was no big deal. He had been used to smoke filling his lungs – where air should be – for quite a while.

“Why do you do it? What do you get out of it?” I asked.

He said it relaxed him; smoking took the edge off. At the time, I didn’t pay attention to any warning labels, if there were any. I knew that smoking was addictive, but that did not set off any major alarms for me at the time.

I was young and thought I would live forever. Being old was far away. I didn’t worry about it. I went for the physical required by my school. The doctor who examined me reeked of cigarette smoke. How bad could cigarettes be, if even doctors smoked?

Was I on my way to becoming one of the millions of kids in the 1970s who got stuck on nicotine?

My mother didn’t smoke until her mid-20s, when she met my father, who was a smoker. He urged her to try it. They were in Hungary, where filtered cigarettes were not the norm. They smoked the unfiltered tobacco and sucked into their lungs whatever it contained. They thought it was safe.

Even in the United States in those days, smoking was promoted as safe. “More doctors smoke Camel than any other brand,” stated one magazine ad, picturing doctors in white gowns, smoking away. Why did they even name a cigarette brand Camel?

R.J. Reynolds named Camel cigarettes to highlight the brand’s use of exotic, imported Turkish tobacco in their signature blend. The name was chosen to evoke the mysterious feel of the Middle East.

That makes sense, but what about Kent?

The Kent cigarette brand was named in honor of Herbert Kent, a former executive and longtime president of the Lorillard Tobacco Company. The brand was launched by Lorillard in 1952.

Tobacco companies ruled the roost, and they had plenty of money to spread their message.

The commercials were hammered in our heads.

Tareyton: “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!”

Winston: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!”

Virginia Slims: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Salem: “You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem.”

Benson & Hedges: “Oh, the disadvantages of Benson & Hedges.”

Kool: “Come up to the Kool taste.”

Lucky Strike: “Lucky Strike separates the men from the boys, but not from the girls.”

My dad started smoking as a teenage soldier in World War II. He didn’t need to be immersed in any of these ad slogans. He was already addicted, which was the least of his concerns during the war.

He got my mother to try it – perhaps much like my friend enticed me to try smoking – and she gradually became a smoker.

I grew up in a room filled with smoke for the first 10 years of my life. After we left Hungary, my mother smoked, and I inhaled secondary smoke for several more years. So, you’d think that I would continue the smoking family chain, since I grew up in it.

After I recovered from coughing, I broke the chain. If that’s how badly it feels at first, I didn’t want to try it again. I didn’t see any useful purpose. There are better ways to relax than smoking a cigarette.

Both my father and my mother smoked most of their adult lives. They both died at age 60 from smoking-related illnesses.

I don’t know what happened to my friend, but I hope he quit and is still alive. By the way, Herbert Kent died at age 73 while on a European vacation. The cause of death was a heart attack.

(Drop me a note on your experiences with smoking. Send it to john.bulletin@gmail.com.)