“Clickbait title!” I hear some of you scream. “I know a Dutch guy who still smokes.”
Yes, and I know a Romanian who speaks fluent Chinese, and another who moved to Japan, but that doesn’t mean most people in Romania speak Chinese or moved to Japan.
The Dutch were once infamous smokers. They used tobacco to calm slaves, so the slaves would not complain of hunger across the Atlantic journey. (Tobacco can mess with your appetite, so it can make you fat as well as skinny. Which is why it seems of the overweight people in Cluj, the majority are smokers.) Many ethnic minorities in America are more likely to smoke due to the legacy of slavery.
The Dutch even introduced tobacco to the Russians. The Orthodox Church there used to be dead set against tobacco. They introduced a law by which dealers in tobacco were executed, and smokers had their noses cut off. Well, a certain Prince Peter, who would later become Peter the Great, started hanging around with Dutch sailors who introduced him to a pipe or something. (The cigarrette did not exist yet, it was invented by a Confederate soldier who was forced to free his slaves at the end of the American Civil War.)
Peter decided to allow tobacco, and he also seemed to make some changes to the Orthodox Church. Like Henry VIII, his religious sentiments were based on his own vices rather than any principles, although he might have used the principles of others to justify the changes.
So, while some Native Americans tribes used tobacco in a few ceremonies, it was the Dutch who got the world addicted to the weed.
And, as time went on, it only got worse. As we hinted before, after the American civil war, tobacco became cheaper with the invention of the cigarrette. Tobacco was already a main driver of the slave trade before cotton. Tobacco was a cash crop that benifitted from big plantations worked by slaves rather than small farms worked by owner-operators or hired hands. Perhaps without the invention of the cigarrette, the difficulty of making tobacco might have led to its demise.
There were still tobacco factories in Europe, however. You can still find tobacco cards that feature the nazis on them. Although German scientists discovered the link between smoking and cancer, that information was partially repressed by the party, as they saw tobacco as a form of income and also a way to control the troops. Still, some information did make it out, as a healthy population was important for the economy. The boredom of war made it hard to quit.
Americans quit smoking after the death of Franklin D Roosevelt. (Not all Americans, but many). His death in office prompted the most earnest research the country had yet known, which led to ideas like the Mediterranean diet. Although people in religion had long suspected the evils of Tobacco (from the orthodox church to the Kings of England) scientists were afraid to speak up. Doctors were bribed by tobacco companies. But with the healt crisis, and manpower crisis after the war, they stayed silent no more. Tobacco was definitively linked to cancer.
This didn’t stop Europe right away. Corrupt officials, pickpockets, and others who had ill gotten gains found tobacco as a quick way to spend the money. And even ordinary people seemed to smoke more than ever. Despite the new information, it seemed to be getting worse.
Dutch offices were so smoky that there was no point in buying cigarrettes any more. And for non-smokers? It was hell. They couldn’t choose not to smoke because it was all around them.
One famous non-smoker pushed a campaign to stop smoking in the workplace. She was Dutch, of course, fixing the same problem her country had caused.
Here, again, religion came to play. Not through force, but through the idea of treating others as you would be treated. That is a sentiment shared by Confucius, Gandhi, and Christianity, among others. In caring for the non-smokers, smokers agreed to stop. People had learnt to respect the rights of those around them not to breathe in dirty air.
Now, you might say, but there are smokers in Holland. Yes, there are. And there are Americans who still speak German as a native language. In tourist areas, you can often see signs saying don’t puff, as the history of marajuana liberalism still pushes many tourists to try that other weed in The Netherlands.
The no smoking areas made it easier for smokers who wanted to quit. With stricter rules in place, people realised they could go for hours at a time without touching a cigarrette. With the addiction of biking, and sports being promoted by the king, the Netherlands is much healthier than it used to be.
Like any country, it has its problems.
The number of smokers went up in Western Europe after the Eastern Europe joined the EU. That is because under communism, cigarrettes were given away for free as part of a ration. The communists learned from the slave owners of old that if you make people forget that they are hungry, then they are easier to control.
And it is also high among those who picked up vices in the refugee camps. After 2015, there seemed to be a spike of smokers in many European countries. Extreme boredom combined with a lack of education caused many to smoke.
We also see boredom in many of the world’s militaries. Almost every video I see of the IDF includes the majority of the soldiers smoking. We also hear of other vices, like gambling, being rampant in Napoleon’s army. We hear that the Third Reich issued their soldiers cigarrettes at the same time as trying to stop smoking among the population. But of course, the ancient Romans, Greeks, Persians, Dacians, Gauls, Vikings, Ethiopians, Han, and others did fine without tobacco.
One thing to note is that Turks don’t smoke as much as they used to. There is as old Romanian expression, “smoke like a Turk,” which now seems embarrassingly out of date. Erdogan himself went on record telling Meloni that she “shouldn’t smoke.” Perhaps we will do another article when we learn how Turks are learning how to quit.
There are many steps you can take to reduce addiction. Here are a few tips we can learn from the Dutch experience.
- Hold tight to your beliefs.
- Think about the rights of others.
- Create zones where the vice is absolutely prohibited
- Enforce prohibitions.
- Create alternative, healthier habits.