Yes, I decided to write on the ‘cigarette’ matter for the english issue of derKi, daring the perils of any type of reaction and admitting to be at the antipathetic position... However, just on the days I needed to work on this article, I went through a rush for my mother’s having an angiography for the second time. Undoubtedly, people who never smoked may rarely have cardiologic problems. Certainly, some of those problems are innate and some originate from circumstances like negative environmental conditions, passive smoking, and etc. But the reason with my mother’s situation is because she once smoked cigarettes for 30 years even though it’s been almost 20 years since she quitted…  

Those who have the habit of smoking and those who maintain that habit are supposed to know that some of more than 4000 chemical materials contained in ‘cigarette’ are methanol (missile fuel), toluene (thinner), radon (radiation), butane (cooking gas), acetone (nail polish remover), ammoniac (toilet cleaner), DDT (insecticide), polonium 210 (radioactive/ carcinogenic), arsenic (mouse poison), carbon monoxide (exhaust gas) and the list goes so forth.      

I think it is easier now to understand why the air becomes something impossible to be breathed when you enter an environment where people smoke and why it is surrounded with disgusting stinks due to the mixture consisting of all those toxic gases. Efforts like naming cigarettes with nonsense words such as ‘light’, ‘menthol’ or adding different tastes like ‘clove essence’ or packaging in extremely stylish packages that  in order to deck out and sell all this loathsomeness to people in some way are unacceptable.     

I had promptly bought and read the book “Tiyatronun Cadısı (The Witch of Theatre)” by Macide Tanır, the esteemed artist in which she had written her memories that had been released in November, 2000. You may be asking what the relation between cigarette and the book is; the relation is that, Mrs. Macide Tanır writes as follows on page 257 of the book: “These days are the days to quit smoking… I smoked for so long time. It seemed to me like you cannot work, think, play games, have conversations with people, drink raki, travel, take decisions and etc. without cigarette. It was not like you walk around with a telephone in your hand as it is now. When the telephone rings, you were supposed to search around for a cigarette to keep on talking after saying ‘Yes sir’. One day I read an article in the newspaper. (Of course I was reading with a cigarette in my hand, you could not read a paper without a cigarette. I was even reading the articles on the issue that cigarette caused cancer smoking cigarette. Attention here, the first cigarette mentioned above is for the pleasure of reading whereas the second one is of grief. I was such addicted.) In the article, it said, ‘The American government took the decision to protect its nation from the damages of cigarette and it implements this decision strictly everywhere. Naturally, the sales rates faced a significant fall in America. A worldwide research was carried out in order to prevent the risk of shout-down of the gigantic cigarette producer firms and the markets of the second class countries which most consume cigarette were surveyed. Turkey stands at the top of the list.’ The news hurt me. I thought about Atatürk. You would say ‘He was smoking; too’. The conditions with him were too tough. He would think as just I did if he lived in my time. I said “I am not a second class citizen”, I didn’t even smoke the cigarette I was holding to the end. I did not chew gums; I did not eat sun flower seeds. I did not look back to see how many years it had been. I saw it was quitted in mind.”    

I am one of those who think that every life is full of a plenty of examples and lessons if it is written in an appropriate language. The quitting part in that book which I read in pleasure affected me deeply. Nowadays, many ‘Artists!’ make agreements with cigarette and alcohol producing firms, are seen with those products in their movie pictures, video clips, concerts and posters and encourage their fans for the consumption of those products. Some of them even take the encouraging manner as if people cannot be creative without using alcohol, drugs and the like substances. An ‘Artist!’ who is so obvious to be in such agreements dared with no respect to say “The stage belongs to me and I do there whatever I want!”. I spent my childhood observing the elders of my family who smoke as many did. The most striking images remained in my mind from those days are my grandmother and my grandfather cleaning the tar in their cigarette holder. Although both of them smoked tobacco using wonderful silver embroidery amber cases and cigarette holders made by Armenian craftsmen; my impressions about cigarette with the tar that flow out of the cigarette holder after some time if it is not cleaned and the dense smell that made me feel suffocated and its effect to turn fingers and teeth yellow were just repulsive!

During the period I was becoming a teenager, some of my friends who smoked secretly form their parents put ash bowls in front of me when someone they were beware of suddenly showed up. It’s funny that some of those times I had four or five cigarettes in front of me. Sometimes they insisted so much saying “come on, take one and smoke, please” that (by the way, to insist for cigarette and alcohol consumption is an attribute peculiar to only our society) I had one or two reluctant tries. But I have such a refined taste that I said “How do you guys smoke this? It just feels as if you lick copper, you must be completely out of your minds!”...

Those who started smoking at some time in life, express that they had the habit among their friends or among their families. Fine, but what’s the point with taking anything you see in your life and go with it with no interrogation? If you have a protestant nature like mine or if you are one of those who say I interrogate everything in my way and go with it only if I am convinced it is okay then something is different.

Especially in my professional life, I worked with a great deal of people who lit their cigarettes with the previous one continuously. Now, as I attend scientific meetings and learn that ‘a passive smoker in a closed environment is damaged as if he or she smoked 4 cigarettes in 1 hour’, I can understand why my beloved mother pushed me and said “oh, my daughter you stink smoky!” when I came home from work and wanted to kiss her and how I can be damaged without being a smoker myself.

I am one of those who never ever take things lying down in no way. Contrarily, I am for assuming the manner clearly at every issue. Therefore, I became a member of The Association of Cigarette-Fighters to clarify my anti-cigarette manner. I even joined the executive committee. There I had the opportunity to attend a great deal of scientific meetings and to consolidate and form my ideas on the issue. I was totally frozen after all I learnt – which there is no end for learning.    

-          I learnt that the current age to start smoking is 11 in Turkey and that the officials of the cigarette producing firms do not even limit their own with this and gave directions to pull the age of starting cigarettes down!

-          that  the shops and the markets close to schools were detected  to  sell cigarettes single by single since the budgets of the students were not available to buy packets and since the school administration would destroy the whole packet when they seized!

-          that every cigarette lit stole 11 minutes from a lifespan and that every breath full of smoke killed 50.000 cells in the brain!

-          that ‘A passive smoking by the rate 30 % occurs’ even in the open air if an intensive smoking behavior is to be mentioned!

-          that, only in Turkey, 100.000 people died of ailments related to ‘smoking’ at early ages and that 10.000 of the 100.000 died of ‘passive smoking’, 4.500 of the 10.000 died for being poisoned by their job mates, 4.000 by their husbands or wives, and most importantly, 1.500 babies were lost before they are 1 year old for passive smoking because of their parents!

-          that the amount spent for cigarettes in our country is 4 times the budget of Ministry of Health!

I felt a huge pain inside when I read on the newspapers that Oğuz Aral, the great master of Turkish Humor which we have recently lost smoked three packets of cigarettes since he was 17 years old and that the doctors detected crumbling in his brain. I agree with the saying every death is an early death but there was very handsome singer with a gushing voice named Tanju Okan which you shall remember and he had a song saying “My best fellows are my drink and my cigarette”. We lost him at a very early age with one of his legs cut because of cigarette and alcohol which he called ‘his best fellows’. It is so grievous that all those occur in front of our eyes but they go forgotten as most of us have the memory of a fish...

I attended the conferences and panels which SSD (ACF-The Association of Cigarette-Fighters) held at schools and I hereby wish to share an establishing of mine with you. The students took the word after listening to all the spokesmen and asked “If ‘cigarette’ is so evil then why teachers at schools, doctors in hospitals, drivers in taxis, statesmen on TV smoke?” and one said “Ataturk smoked, too” I – who never swallows words like those even it would cost me death – walked a step forward and said “Turkey needed him for so much time, if only he did not smoke and drink and we did not lose him so early! He had some other reforms and revolutions which he would realize!” and added “Besides, medical science was as not progressed as it is today and the harmful substances in cigarette were not determined in such details and it was not known to be 100 % carcinogenic”.   

Thanks to God that the Law with the Number 4207 came into effect and now ‘smoking cigarettes’ in mass-transportation vehicles was banned in our country. The law is in effect not only for mass-transportation vehicles but also for ‘Closed public spaces!’ but unfortunately it is partially implemented.

Imagine a “coyote” place like America; they would not pay even 1 cent to anyone not deserving it but it pay millions of dollars with no question at compensation lawsuits against ‘cigarette’. I have a newspaper extract in my hand saying ‘A compensation of 150 million dollars for the Light cigarette trick!’ Philip Morris, the greatest cigarette firm of the USA was convicted to pay a compensation of more than 150 million dollars to the wife of an addict who died of cancer. Because the court found the opinion that “light” cigarettes are less harmful for health is incorrect and misleading...

I myself will continue my struggle against cigarette until the end of my life – as Mr. Hayrettin Karaca, the Chairman of TEMA Association expressed in his words ‘mind the issues which are not your business.’ And I believe that lack of love lie beneath all “bad habits”! If one loves and cares about him or herself he or she will find that he or she deserves good things and will not spend the cash or the time on such things.

Please do not poison yourself and people around you! Please do not say words to make cigarette excusable! And please do not defend the WRONG for whatever reason! Because, we can NEVER reach the right defending the wrong...

Be in love and health...