Tobacco.org

• Doctors aim to ban tobacco in the Vatican 

Reflecting the gravity and addictiveness of the health problem, two dozen area doctors and nurses are appealing to a higher authority to curtail cigarette use. When Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States in April, they plan to come armed with a petition with thousands of names asking the pope “to declare the Vatican the world’s first country to ban tobacco in its entirety.” They are asking the pope to also “condemn the production, distribution and sale” of cigarettes and all tobacco products. They are citing nicotine’s addictive force and that more than 5 million deaths a year worldwide is traced to smoking. “We are frustrated over the lack of action on the part of our leaders whose job it is to protect and advocate for the common good,” said Dr. Claude Curran, a city psychiatrist treating addicts and co-founder of Physicians and Nurses Against Tobacco. Curran said they selected the pope not only for his religious, moral and spiritual leadership but because “he’s the head of a country. … He’s not only the Vicar of Christ. He’s also the defender of man,” Curran said. “Who’s going to protect us if he doesn’t?” . . .

They plan to publish the petition in New England newpapers during Pope Benedict’s first visit to the country, to Washington, D.C., and New York City April 15-20. . . .

“Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom,” read the New York Times headline of April 1, 1928. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, asked years ago by Curran and a couple others how to reverse the worldwide cigarette curse he helped bolster, planted the idea of petitioning the pope. “Let us stomp out the ‘torches of freedom’ and bring something else to light: The eradication of tobacco,” PANAT says.

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[H]e’s the head of a country. . . . He’s not only the Vicar of Christ. He’s also the defender of man. Who’s going to protect us if he doesn’t?
Dr. Claude Curran, a Mass. psychiatrist treating addicts and co-founder of Physicians and Nurses Against Tobacco, which will petition Pope Benedict XVI when he visits the United States in April “to declare the Vatican the world’s first country to ban tobacco in its entirety.”