RACIAL POISONS.

White Ribbon, Volume 49, Issue 6, 18 July 1943, Page 6

RACIAL POISONS.

No duty is more binding upon citizens than the one to guard the race from everything which threatens to cause deterioration. iwo poisons—alcohol and nicotine —are racial poisons. Alcohol’s effects are well known, but the evils of its sister poison, Nicotine, have been less widely advertised, probably owing to the fact that previous to 1918 smoking was not common among women. Now it is quite common to see young women with cigarettes in their mouths. With the principle of equality of sex recognised, women naturally say. “Mer. smoke; why cannot we?” To this we reply that motherhood ever means more than fatherhood. T here is no equality of sacrifice in carrying on the race. Men in a clubroom discussion appealed to a doctor to know why as they smoked themselves should they object to women smoking, and the doctor’s terse replv was, “Men do not carry children, neither do they feed t!*tm.” The mother’s body is the home of ♦l:e infant for nine months, and when die smokes, her blood, with its nicotine content, Hows through the delicate tissues of her baby, and these tissues are more delicate then than after birth.

Then, for several months, the mother’s milk, with its nicotine content. is the infant’s food. Hr. Saleebv, world-famous eugenist, lately deceased, speaking at a conference in Toronto said: “When the women smoke as freely as the men. God help the children, for they’ll be past all human help.

In our own fair land, a baby a fortnight old died very suddenly and the verdict of the coroner’s inquest wa> “Died of nicotine heart.”

All through life this poison weakens them. In U.S.A., where careful records are kept by Rocke'dler and kindred institutes, it is stated alter extensive research, that ir. high school and college no first-class scholar is a smoker or the child oi a smoker. Good students, some of them, but never in the first rank.

Burbank will not have a smoker in his experimental gardens; their sense of smell is too defective for his delicate work.

Thus, upon parents, but chiefly upon mothers, rests the responsibility for bearing and rearing a healthy race. W hether New Zealand increases both quantity and quality of our population, we shall fall behind other nations who refuse to license racial poisons.