THE GOLDEN AGE AND THE CAUSE OF YOUTHFUL CRIME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23953, 31 October 1939, Page 5

THE GOLDEN AGE AND THE CAUSE OF YOUTHFUL CRIME

TO THE EDITOR

Sir.—lt amused and also annoyed me to read what Mr P. C. Webb said was the cause of crime amongst the youth of the world. It was lust what he would say. He blames the capitalists, of course. He has evidently been reading a few books on psychology and imagines he knows everything, but I have been studying the harmful effects of tobacco and cigarettes for 30 years and know what I am talking about. That which is causing so much crime amongst the youth of the world to-day is nothing else but cigarettesmoking and alcoholic liquor which has been drugged with an extract of nicotine. The youth to-day are ruined bodv and soul with these devilish things. Nicotine is a rank poison, next to prussic acid in its deadliness._ yet boys are smoking 10 and 15 times as much tobacco as their fathers did. What is the result? The poor fellpws do not know what they are doing It is not their fault that _ they turn to crime. They are to be pitied rather than blamed . , Tobacco is well named the devils weed and cigarettes are well named coffin nails. One of the world’s greatest physical culturists, Mr McFadden says in his book, “ The Truth Aboul Tobacco,” that cigarettes are the greatest enemy to civilisation and are the root cause of all the crime amongst the youth of the world, and I would advise Mr Webb to get that book and read it for himself. Dr Thacker, of Christchurch said tobacco was the most deadly thing ever put into the hands of man Mr J. Renfrew White, of Dunedin, condemns it as a destroyer of health, and

Dr Ulric Williams always speaks against it to his lectures. . Yes, Mr Webb would be doing the youth the best service he could render if he would only see to it that he and his friends in Parliament prohibited tobacco from entering or being grown in New Zealand. Then we should see the golden age about which Mr Webb speaks, and the youth would flower in all their beauty as God intended them to do. I am, etc.,

Watchful