Consider Weakness of Others
The teacher may argue that no harm came to him from smoking because he smoked moderately, and no harm can come to the boy if he will be moderate. But, the teacher cannot insure this influence of his action. Every sensible teacher must admit that there are not a few instances where positive harm has come to smokers. At this point it is well to say that the pipe, the cigar, chewing tobacco, and the exceptional snuffing of tobacco, are all related closely to the cigarette, which gets most of the blame for the harm done by tobacco. They are all evil and their use is immoral. That no teacher may be in doubt as to whether smoking a cigarette, a cigar or a pipe, or chewing and snuffing tobacco have evil results, it may be advisable to call attention to actual records of many concrete cases; and cases in which much harm has been suffered are not isolated, but are generally distributed. The records of any city superintendent of schools will reveal scores of cases of boys whose minds have been weakened, whose muscular organisms are shattered, whose nervous systems are irresponsive and beyond the boy’s control, in fact, whose entire lives are wrecks, because they indulged in the use of tobacco. Every user of tobacco, at first, is a moderate user, but the evil habit leads to demoralization and excessiveness. Any juvenile judge can cite many instances of boys who were brought into the juvenile court, because their minds were depraved and their passions all out of restraint, because the use of tobacco had had its evil effect upon the boys’ minds. If the reader will concede that some evil comes from the use of tobacco, then the argument is complete; for any action that necessarily has evil results is wrong, therefore, immoral and the teacher has no right to perform that act.