Welcome To The Silent Tobacco Holocaust. That may sound a bit sarcastic, but I am far from that in my new awareness of just what we have going on in this wide world of ours.
Listen to my words now: Do you know the word, "Holocaust"? Do you know what it means? It's a word that means the "burning" of "whole things" and has come to stand for the deaths of over five million Jews in gas chambers and then into crematoriums in The Second World War... It was never quite believable until Allied Forces swarmed into the camps where these people were being destroyed.
In our own day the same thing is happening with five and a half million smokers dying each and every year because of smoking related ills. That amount of folks dying every year...And the world is silent.
Yes, I know folks like me try to get folks to quit smoking; and scores of groups pass laws forbidding folks from cigarettes... But in reality, most people are silent about this strange, cruel tragedy.
...One of these days people are going to revolt- lots of people-not just a few-and raise a cry that has never been heard before- about how such a tragedy could continue to be in the face of such facts.
Do you still smoke? Come with me then as you and I watch a group of smokers march towards a large building at the command of some unseen speaker--ordering them to march.
You and I watch as they enter this large building; and there is a feeling we share that something bad is happening to these folks pretty soon. We both have the feeling that in their smug innocence they have no idea that they are going to be killed once inside. They are smokers who have refused to quit. And the large building is a subterfuge for a death camp.
...Most Jews had no notion that they were being gassed...They were told they're getting showers.
Smokers today still think they are being aided by cigarettes in the way they help them get through their stress, or concentrate or just feel good as they drink something strong.
That number-- of five and a half million smokers dying-- is each and every year. (The five million Jews who perished represented all who died in all the war years. The millions of smokers--five and a half million----who die-- die each year that passes.)
Years from now there will be memorials to these victims just as there are many memorials to the Holocaust innocents. Then there will be no more silence.