Stephen Helfer never goes anywhere without some kind of tobacco on his person.
He carries loose Norwegian shag tobacco in small bags or in a metal roll box that produces short, handmade cigarettes. On many an occasion, he has a round tin of smokeless, spitless packets of Snus to tuck in a lip or cheek. He also smokes a pipe daily, sometimes in his home, sometimes outside, depending on his moods. After over 60 years smoking, Helfer, 78, has refined his tastes.
Helfer runs a 30-minute, twice-a-month show on Cambridge Community Television, “The Smoking Section,” where he invites guests to discuss and sometimes debate him on the merits and negative effects of smoking. He’s also the leader and co-founder of the Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights, a group with six regular members, which has been railing against the “war on tobacco,” as he calls it, for 20 years.
Helfer has pitted himself against a widely accepted public health conclusion on tobacco and a continual flow of anti-smoking legislation and sentiment that has progressively and successfully discouraged nicotine use over several generations. He and his group, the Citizens, have campaigned tirelessly with variable success to oppose any city or state proposal that restricts smoking and tobacco products, all while smoking rates in the U.S. and the state are at all-time lows.
“If you dismantle the anti-smoking elephant, bite by bite, you will see that it is certainly very, very, very much weaker than anti-smoking activists say it is,” Helfer said. “The claims for smoking have gotten more and more shrill, and [activists are] saying things that they know cannot possibly be true.”
Mark Gottlieb, executive director of Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, has been on the other side of Helfer’s efforts working in tobacco control policies. Gottlieb is an architect of many of Massachusetts’ nicotine laws, most of which have come to pass.
“Every time we’ve had a proposal for changes in tobacco policy, Stephen has reliably come forward in opposition to such proposals armed with facts or factoids to support his position,” Gottlieb said. “But, I don’t think he is ever being disingenuous with his use of research.”
The Citizens convene nearly every Sunday at 2 p.m. in Andala Coffee House. Down in the basement, their most active members — mostly men between ages 46 and 78 — sit around tables for the afternoon and mull over a vast array of topics that often have no relation to tobacco, nicotine or smoking. Musings are only minorly interrupted when one or two Citizens step out for a smoke break, usually taken right outside the coffee house.
The city of Cambridge banned smoking in restaurants and bars in 2003. Helfer had been protesting nicotine laws in public town meetings across Massachusetts in the prior decade, but it was the restaurant smoking ban that galvanized him and Cambridge native Ben Hirsch to found the Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights. Hirsch now resides in New Jersey — Helfer has been the face of the group ever since.
“I was looking for a group like this, actually,” said Jonathan Brown-Leopold, 46. Brown-Leopold, who lives in Quincy, met Helfer protesting against smoking restrictions in front of Cambridge City Hall over a decade ago. “They’re the only one in the greater Boston area.”
Helfer has a trove of studies, facts and lengthy spiels he keeps in his arsenal to fight the “war on tobacco” that range from scientific studies and quotes that support his rebuttals to his own personal observations and conclusions. He compiled an 80-page booklet in 1998 typed, printed and bound like an academic thesis, titled “A Different Opinion on Smoking.” It largely consists of newspaper clippings, curated quotes from doctors downplaying the dangers of smoking, and pictures of famous artists, authors and intellectuals who smoked, many of whom Helfer quotes often.
“Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were all heavy smokers, and Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were all non-smokers,” Helfer said at one Sunday meeting. He mentioned the fact twice, each time an hour apart. “I don’t know what exactly you can draw from that, but I think there is something interesting about that.”
Helfer believes anti-smoking laws and opinions are the result of a “moral panic” that began in the 1960s, and that further studies conducted on smoking are products of that panic. He thinks adverse effects of smoking or secondhand smoke are “greatly, greatly, greatly exaggerated,” and that smokers are ostracized by the general public. He puts nicotine in the same category as sugar and caffeine in terms of its addictiveness and detriment to health. Taxes on nicotine products are aimed at disenfranchising the poor and mentally unwell who use nicotine at higher rates than the wealthy, he says.
“I don’t think the answer is anywhere near simple,” Helfer said. “I think it’s much more profound and much more complex about why this social movement has been so successful.”
Brown-Leopold, the youngest active Citizen and a staunch proponent for smoking, began smoking cigarettes in middle school when he was 12 years old as a way to cope with his mental health. It calmed his mind and allowed him to function better, he said. Brown-Leopold smokes two packs a day.
“It’s always easy to blame smoking, but I quit smoking for about a year when I was a teenager,” he said. “My anxiety was so bad I picked it back up again, and my breathing is better while smoking because I don’t have as bad of anxiety.”
Paul Neff, 72, and David Ajemian, 65, are both slightly less convicted, and less heavy smokers in comparison.
“It’s about time for a rest. Especially now that I’m over 70, I’ve got to start taking things more seriously,” said Neff, who smoked more heavily in the past and now smokes “on and off.” “I’ve got to conserve what I have, health-wise.”
“According to Steve, there were many great athletes who smoked heavily, like biking champions,” Ajemian said. He smokes with his morning coffee and evening drink. “That made me feel a little better.”
There is also the contingent of Citizens who do not, or rarely, smoke but believe smoking should be a personal choice, including Joanie Sullivan, 67.
A few years ago, Sullivan lost her desire for cigarettes after nearly four decades chain-smoking them. She had a respiratory attack that put her in the hospital, and when she was discharged, the urge to smoke had died.
“I definitely think smoking has been all the worse for me, and [Helfer] doesn’t really agree with that,” Sullivan said. She considers herself an “honorary member” of the group. “I’m not 100% in sync with him and all of his beliefs, which actually makes for wonderful discussions when we get together.”
The Citizens’ membership has ebbed and waned through the years, but it becomes especially vocal when any town, not just Cambridge, proposes new legislation to restrict nicotine and tobacco products, Helfer said. Every decade, new anti-smoking and nicotine proposals crop up in city and state legislatures. Helfer and the Citizens are often there on the other side with arguments and talking points that have changed little over 30 years.
Generational nicotine bans are the newest policy to make their way through city boards of health. A generational ban would allow a municipality to set a cutoff date that prevents anyone born after the date from ever purchasing tobacco even after turning 21, with the goal of creating a nicotine-free generation. These policies have been enacted in over 20 towns and communities in Massachusetts, starting with Brookline in 2020.
PHAI executive director Mark Gottlieb is an architect of the generational nicotine ban. Gottlieb first encountered Helfer during Helfer’s early pro-smoking efforts, over 30 years ago.
Helfer has invited Gottlieb’s boss and president of the PHAI, Richard Daynard, onto “The Smoking Section” to debate tobacco issues in the past. The tension and pushback Helfer brings to public health policy is one that Gottlieb said he welcomes.
“Every time Stephen raises his hand at a Zoom meeting for a Board of Health, or if I’m lucky enough to to hear him in person with his recognizable baritone, he eloquently states these opinions very consistently,” Gottlieb said. “[He] is doing it as honestly as I think someone can, and I would not think to vilify him for doing so.”
Gottlieb called the generational ban a “final frontier” in nicotine legislation. Its adoption is coming along slowly and will continue to spread, like many related policies that have come before it. And like many battles waged and lost over those policies, none of that is bound to stop Helfer and the Citizens.
“This is what I’ve specialized in,” Helfer said. “Sometimes I wonder why I care about it so much myself.”
This story is part of a partnership between Cambridge Day and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
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