Is smoking a sin?

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Benignus

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Hey y’all

I’m 16 and I got problems. I used to smoke up till about 2 years ago, then I quit, then I do it on and off. But my question is this: Is smoking necessarily a sin? There are many devout people, even priests and religious, who smoke. I was just wondering.
 
Nick,

Not sure if it’s a sin but I am sure that it’s stupid. It’s addicting, expensive, smelly and here the kicker: it will eventually KILL YOU! Plus, here’s something to consider: when you smoke, your breath stinks and girls will not want to kiss you. I’m glad to hear you say that you’ve cut back alot - that’s smart. Now cut it out entirely and let the kissing begin! (kidding!) 🙂
God Bless you, CM
 
Look at it this way: Smoking is known to harm you, to cause or contribute to conditions that can seriously damage your body and even kill you. If you know that (and you do), what can you conclude? Is this how you treat the temple of the Holy Spirit? Is this how you prepare yourself to “run the race” with every fiber and nerve of your being? Is this an expression of “loving others as ourselves” if the expense is wasted – not even on a personal luxury but on something that hurts us and shortens our lives, depriving our loved ones of our presence? When you have children, will they be deprived of clean air because of you?

There is nothing that can be said in defense of anybody’s taking up smoking, much less in defense of a Christian taking it up – a Christian, who believes his body and ife to be a divine gift.
 
I’ll agree with mercygate. Goes in the same category as overeating, lack of exercise,over consumption of alcohol, etc. If you know it can harm you and you do it anyway, it would be a sin, no?
 
Good Morning,

Want to hear it from someone with the REAL DEAL?

I started smoking as a teen, just like you. Back then, the American Medical Association actually recommended it and sponsored various brands of cigarettes.

I smoked for about 40 years and finally quit about 12 years ago. I never felt too bad, I did get out of breath working outside (we raised Arabian Horses) and I coughed a bit, not too bad though. For the most part I felt good and I really enjoyed smoking, I liked the taste and the smell of a fresh cigarette.

This past October, I caught a cold I could not get rid of. The first part of this year, I was diagnosed with a lung cancer in my upper right lung and in March, lost a third of that lung, followed by 7 weeks of Radiation therapy. So far, I am recovered. However, I also know that 50% of lung cancers return and they are the number one cancer killer of men and women. They did catch me early for this ugly desease and my chances are better than many.

I am actually in pretty good condition for an old broad. I am 68 and still work.

According to the facts I can learn, about 80% of all lung cancers can be traced directly to cigarette smoking.

My surgery was up high on my lung. Because of that and the radiation, I have nerve damage to my right arm. I don’t know if it will ever feel normal again. I also have damage to the nerves of my right eye. These nerves cross under the collar bone so that is how they are damaged. The pupil of my right eye doesn’t dilate very well and the eyelid droops. I am told the eylid can be fixed surgically. I also do not sweat on the right side of my head, make up for it on the left.

I have developed what appears to be some asthma and am taking meds for that, now. I also will be having xrays, ct scans, blood work and just generally being monitored for the rest of my life. At this stage, I still experience anxiety, waiting for results of these tests. Maybe someday, I won’t.

IS SMOKING A SIN? Armed with the knowledge I just posted, understanding it and then deliberately damaging oneself, might be. I had a serious need to repent and confess what I considered a horrible arrogance in thinking this could not happen to me. My cancer doctor is more generous, he said I was very addicted by the time all the information was out.

Today, there is little excuse. There is very good information out there.

AND THERE ARE FOLKS LIKE ME WHO HAVE LIVED TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT. At first, I promised I would never preach to anyone. I have a big change of heart when I read a post like the opening one here.
 
I. Shawn McElhinney on Rerum Novarum

I was reminded of a story that a cigar smoking priest of the Diocese of Tulsa, who is now in training for the Vatican diplomatic corps, told me. When he was a seminarian in Rome, he learned that Pius X, who was the pope from 1903 to 1914, called a bishop onto the carpet to reprimand him for his scandalous misbehavior with wine, women and song, and to correct his wrongs patiently.

The pope offered the errant bishop a cigar from the papal humidor on his desk. The bishop declined the offer with the protestation, “I do not have that vice, Your Holiness,” to which His Holiness replied, “If cigars were a vice, I would not offer you one, for you have quite enough vices already.”

After his death, Pope Pius X was canonized a saint and is now known as St.Pius X. According to Catholic belief, a saint is a holy person who is now in heaven. Although Pope Pius X may not have become St. Pius X because he smoked cigars, smoking cigars apparently did not keep him from being a holy man who is now in heaven. Indeed, cigars may have helped him be holy.
The logic is impeccable.

Living in cities is guaranteed to take 10 years off your life - is it sinful?

Working in the steel industry, roofing, and cement work is not only dangerous, but will also take years off your life. Sinful?

Getting behind the wheel of a car raises your chance of being killed. Sinful?

Walking across a busy street raises the probability of an early death. Sinful?

Eating seafood and pork poses additional health risks, ranging from mercury poisoning to colon cancer. Sinful?

**Smoking cigars also gave me the opportunity to have long discussions with several people who were outside of the Church, and the Holy Spirit has operated upon both of them via those discussions. One went through RCIA and was received into the Church at Easter Vigil. The other has returned to the Church and his actions may help his family come to the Church (including his three unbaptised children). **

So, am I a sinner because I smoke an occasional cigar? :eek:
 
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robertaf:
My cancer doctor is more generous, he said I was very addicted by the time all the information was out.

Today, there is little excuse. There is very good information out there.
Click to expand...
May God reward you for your witness, and may you live in good health to share it for many more years.

My mother died of lung cancer, with an unlit cigarette in her clenched hand . . . Unlit because of the oxygen she needed to breathe. She, too, became addicted as a teenager, and could never break the habit. My seven-year-old daughter was holding her grandmother’s other hand when she died. Best lesson she ever learned.
 
Perhaps my favorite priest, and a family friend, who was in my estimation a holy man, used to quip:

“I’d rather smoke in this life than the next”.

His point was an admission that his smoking was a crutch of sorts for dealing with stress, anxiety, etc and that he found it a better alternative than his alternative responses to these feelings.

Not to condone smoking though. I smoked for 10 years, starting as a teenager. Fortunately I finally got sick of it before I got sick.

One thing I’d recommend for you to consider is this: I started smoking because I felt controlled by others in my life, and smoking was something I could do and nobody could stop me. I have grown out of what I now recognize as co-dependency. My increased emotional/psychological health led me to quit smoking. Perhaps you could do a bit of a self-examination and contemplate why you feel the need to smoke, and what the healthy response to those feelings might be.
 
Smoking is potentially sinful but not intrinsicly sinful. From the Catechism:
2290 The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the road, at sea, or in the air.
Click to expand...
The key here is excess. By advocating a puritanical abstinence, you are in danger of joining the cult of the body:
2289 If morality requires respect for the life of the body, it does not make it an absolute value. It rejects a neo-pagan notion that tends to promote the cult of the body, to sacrifice everything for it’s sake, to idolize physical perfection and success at sports. By its selective preference of the strong over the weak, such a conception can lead to the perversion of human relationships.
Click to expand...
Scott
 
Scott Waddell:
The key here is excess.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Someone who smokes a pipe or a cigar on occasion, or even a cigarette once in a while while out with friends is not sinning. Those actions are pretty neutral- much like eating dessert after a meal. What is problematic is smoking in excess. I keep hearing about people with “2 pack-a-day” habits. We don’t need to smoke that much. It is damaging to our health, it is a pollutant, it is a waste of money.

To me smoking a cigar is about as different from having a 2-pack-a-day cigarette habit as enjoying a nice glass of wine or beer is from swigging down a fifth of vodka straight from the bottle.
 
Greetings

I could never have been that sort of smoker, myself. At least not with cigarettes. I think that cig smokers are a bit different, generally than the occaisional cigar smoker or even pipe smoker.

We seriously addict, for one thing. Except for the rare person, there is little argument about this addiction. The addiction, by itself, drives us into less than moderate smoking. Of course there are other motivations as well, like mine was, I truly loved to smoke. Other habits are involved here, too.

I would never recommend trying to smoke cigarettes in moderation, but then, I have had far different experiences with this than some. I would NEVER hint to a teenager, that this is a likely result of teen smoking.
The facts are these:
You start smoking as a teen, the chances are you will become addicted.
Once addicted, most…yes most smokers want to quit.
Most smokers who try to quit, experience repeated failures.

I do not plan to give up my daily glass of wine with dinner. This I handle in moderation.
I will enjoy cheesecake, prime rib, bbq ribs and my morning coffee, when in the mood. I wouldn’t walk 5 blocks to get any of these if I were out, but I have walked a couple miles to buy cigarettes when I was out.

One puff, just one little puff on a cigarette would have me smoking again. I know that, even with all I have been through.

Please, never tell a teen they can smoke in moderation. Not with all the evidence around us. It is just too unlikely.
 
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robertaf:
Please, never tell a teen they can smoke in moderation. Not with all the evidence around us. It is just too unlikely.
Click to expand...
Fair enough, Bertie. I do know a small handful of people who can smoke one or two when at the bar and don’t have a problem. I realize that they are extremely fortunate not to have been addicted. But you never know if you are going to be that person, and since cigarettes are so obviously addictive, why would anyone expose themselves to that possible addiction? Especially considering what we know today. That’s the main reason I never tried smoking when it was offered to me in high school. I didn’t want to be the person with a pack-a-day habit by the time I graduated.
 
tobacco is addictive, and submitting to any addiction and feeding it is giving control of your body over to a created thing, and offense against the first commandment (and also against the 5th commandment about thou shalt not kill, including yourself). There is a grave offense against charity by indulging in a habit which is almost guaranteed to give you a variety of health problems, which your relatives will have to deal with. If you would really like to punish your family for a long time, continue to smoke and put yourself at high risk for respiratory ailments, COPD, and a list of cancers a mile long. Dealing with any of these will punish your relatives and friends gruesomely.
 
About 3 or 4 times a year I will catch my husband smoking a ‘roll-your-own’ cigarette as he is working around the ranch. I always tease him about it. But that is all he smokes. Less then 10 a year probably. He has been doing this since we were married 10 years ago.

Smoking grosses me out. Two ladies came in to my shop the other day who smelled so BAD from smoking I was almost sick and they couldn’t get out of my shop fast enough. I had to open all the windows and doors and turn on all the fans. They obviously smoke in their cars, in their houses, and they reeked bad.

Benignus!! Don’t smoke it is gross gross gross!! Not sexy, not smart, not good :tsktsk:
 
I. Shawn McElhinney on Rerum Novarum

I was reminded of a story that a cigar smoking priest of the Diocese of Tulsa, who is now in training for the Vatican diplomatic corps, told me. When he was a seminarian in Rome, he learned that Pius X, who was the pope from 1903 to 1914, called a bishop onto the carpet to reprimand him for his scandalous misbehavior with wine, women and song, and to correct his wrongs patiently.

The pope offered the errant bishop a cigar from the papal humidor on his desk. The bishop declined the offer with the protestation, “I do not have that vice, Your Holiness,” to which His Holiness replied, “If cigars were a vice, I would not offer you one, for you have quite enough vices already.”

After his death, Pope Pius X was canonized a saint and is now known as St.Pius X. According to Catholic belief, a saint is a holy person who is now in heaven. Although Pope Pius X may not have become St. Pius X because he smoked cigars, smoking cigars apparently did not keep him from being a holy man who is now in heaven. Indeed, cigars may have helped him be holy.
The logic is impeccable.

Living in cities is guaranteed to take 10 years off your life - is it sinful?

Working in the steel industry, roofing, and cement work is not only dangerous, but will also take years off your life. Sinful?

Getting behind the wheel of a car raises your chance of being killed. Sinful?

Walking across a busy street raises the probability of an early death. Sinful?

Eating seafood and pork poses additional health risks, ranging from mercury poisoning to colon cancer. Sinful?

**Smoking cigars also gave me the opportunity to have long discussions with several people who were outside of the Church, and the Holy Spirit has operated upon both of them via those discussions. One went through RCIA and was received into the Church at Easter Vigil. The other has returned to the Church and his actions may help his family come to the Church (including his three unbaptised children). **
 
This topic has probably been discussed before, but smoking does not only endanger the smoker, but also all of those exposed to secondhand smoke.

Do we have a right to expose others to our secondhand smoke? Wouldn’t it be sin to knowingly endanger the lives of other people?

Secondhand smoke is estimated by EPA to cause:**3,000 lung cancer deaths **in nonsmokers each year. EPA also found that secondhand smoke causes increased risk of death from heart disease.

Every year, an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 children under 18 months of age get **pneumonia or bronchitis **from breathing secondhand tobacco smoke resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year.
Exposure to secondhand smoke increases the number of episodes and severity of symptoms in 200,000 to 1,000,000 children with asthma.

It also increases the risk for** middle ear infections** in children and of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Secondhand smoke has been classified by the EPA and NIH as a Group A carcinogen (known cause of lung cancer in humans). Some of the components found in tobacco smoke that are known to cause cancer or are suspected to be carcinogenic include:
  • Code: 
                          Formaldehyde
  • Code: 
                          Arsenic
  • Code: 
                          Cadmium
  • Code: 
                          Benzene
  • Code: 
                         Ethylene oxide
Here are a few other chemicals in tobacco smoke:
  • Ammonia
  • Carbon monoxide
  • Methanol
  • Hydrogen cyanide
Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air and Radiation, see http://www.epa.gov/smokefree/index.html
 
I have a bit of a different take on this.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought there was a legal age for smoking, age 18 or so? As with the drinking age, it’s a just law. We are morally required to obey just laws. So, smoking when you’re underage would be just as sinful as drinking when you’re underage.
 
Personally I would have to agree with the “OK in moderation” idea.

I grew up thinking that cigarettes were disgusting and why would anyone want to smoke them. I believed teenagers did it just to “look cool” (which I still believe most of them do). My grandfather died of cancer from smoking before I was even born.

However, I have found a brand of cigarettes which I don’t find as disgusting (if there is such a thing 🙂 ). I don’t want to become addicted and I cannot afford an addiction (that and I don’t want me and my apartment to have a constant stinky smell either). I smoke one or two every so often, mainly in social situations. The same thing with drinking. I don’t advocate drinking to excess (a man I work with is an alcoholic, which is sad because he is also a very good person), but I do drink every so often as well. At times when I feel particularly stressed, having a cigarette relaxes me. Not something I want to become dependant on, but it helps every so often.

Personally, I just think that in moderation, cigarettes are OK, but to be careful with it. I know that I tend to have addictive behavior (more psychological than physical), so I need to watch what I do as well.
 
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