Page 8 - July Aug 2022 Newsletter Final_Neat

Serving, A Privilege

Raymond Reyes, MD

This is an open letter to all NCPS members, but especially those who have contributed
as Council officers in past years.

This is a District Branch that makes leadership opportunities available for younger mem-
bers, including those very early in their professional career.
We've started a new cycle with new members in (on?) our NCPS Council. As is often the
case, we will likely hear from junior officers as we conduct business meetings and plan the collective activities that
allow our Society to thrive. The same holds for Committee members, equally deserving of recognition for their con-
tributions in making ethics, professional education, government affairs, member support, communication, all the
relevant activities to be expected from a professional guild possible.
Twenty-five years ago, I was finishing a year spent on the Governing Council in the American Medical Association -
Young Physicians Section . As our picture was taken, I overheard the outgoing president address his replacement.
"Once you experience leadership you then have a responsibility to offer service whenever called upon."
I never forgot that. And so, at this time I offer a gentle reminder to those of you who have served as Councilor, Sec-
retary, Vice-president or in any other official capacity. The psychiatric organization will benefit when you find an-
other chance to contribute, either on Committees, or the Council itself. The same holds true to members in training:
whatever good times come your way, realistically it is you who creates the opportunity. A long time ago I learned
that a light is not to be placed under a bushel.

To respond to this article, CLICK HERE.

Tobacco and

Youth

Sydney Wright, MD

As a boy growing up in a small California farm town, I have clear memories of my physi-
cian father coming home and lighting up an unfiltered Chesterfield cigarette as he asked
us about our day. I have a home movie of my father helping me carve a Jack-o’-lantern on
the patio, while he smoked a cigarette. Then, one day when I was six, he abruptly stopped smoking and never
smoked again, saying he’d begun in the army and it was time to quit. Years later as an occasional social smoker in
medical school, I would fly home and notice the small package of four Winston cigarettes served on all meal trays.
It struck me as a sort of cool, adult thing at the time. That changed during my internal medicine training, when I
began to see the health costs of smoking in painfully direct ways: a burly, affable highway patrol officer becoming
cachectic and dying of lung cancer, a retired gardener dying abruptly as his lung cancer eroded a pulmonary vessel,
and a delightful elderly gentleman in the pulmonary ICU, who somehow smuggled cigarettes into the ICU and lit
up as he gasped for air in end stage lung disease. Now as a psychiatrist for many years I have seen many patients
struggle to quit smoking. Some succeed, but many stop, start, stop again and struggle with their addiction to nico-
tine. It was this series of life experiences that contributed to a news item catching my eye.
In December, 2021 New Zealand took a novel position in the effort to reduce tobacco smoking. The plan will pro-
hibit the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2008 for their lifetime. The plan will also mandate the reduction of
nicotine in cigarettes and reduce national sales outlets from 8000 to 500 (Reuters, BBC). There are a number of con-
troversial issues related to this plan. Among them is concern for the illegal, black-market sale of cigarettes and the

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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA PSYCHIATRIC SOCIETY Page 8 July/August 2022