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History of Tobacco
The known history of tobacco dates back to over 9000 years ago. Humankind has had a long history of using plants and weeds for their intoxicant, medicinal or social properties. Throughout the world and through the ages, plants have been smoked, chewed, or ingested, and their use has often been accompanied by elaborate social and religious rituals.
Today, the use of tobacco is one of the most widely recognized human social habits and the addiction it causes is also one of the most difficult to overcome.
Origins of Tobacco Smoking
The history of tobacco starts in the Americas around 6000 BCE where it is believed that the tobacco plant evolved.
From 470 to 630 CE, some of the Maya begin to migrate into the area which is now the United States as far as the Mississippi River and introduced tobacco to the local natives. The Toltecs, who created the Aztec Empire, borrowed smoking from the Maya who stayed in Mexico. Two castes of smokers evolved among the Aztec:
The History of Tobacco Continues with the Introduction of Tobacco Smoking into Europe
In 1492 when they landed in Cuba, Columbus’ crew spotted the natives “drinking smoke”. Rodrigo Jerez and Luis de Torres are credited with being the first to spot the natives smoking. (The natives rolled the tobacco in palm or maize(corn) leaves to form a cigar). The history of tobacco now moves to Eurpoe when Jerez became a smoker, the first outside of the natives, and brought the habit back to his hometown. When his neighbors saw the smoke billowing from his nose and mouth, they became frightened and Jerez was put in jail for 7 years by the Inquisition
The plants and seeds were brought back to Europe where they were grown by local herbalists in their gardens. In 1560 Jean Nicot (after whom nicotine was named), the French ambassador to Portugal, wrote a letter to Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France, extolling the curative properties of tobacco. Tobacco was believed to cure everything form gout to cancer (how wrong can you get!). In any case, by1570, physicians were using it to cure everything.
Also at this time, tobacco smoking became the center of its first major controversy. James I of England hated smoking as much as he disliked Raleigh so he tried to impose a tax of 4000% on tobacco. But, due to the popularity of smoking, the attempt failed. Raleigh tried to set up tobacco-growing colony in Roanoke, Virginia but was unsuccessful.
The History of Tobacco Continues with the Spread of Smoking to the Rest of the World
By mid 1600’s, tobacco had been introduced to every major civilization,even as far away as China and had been adopted by the local inhabitants despite fines and penalties levied by the rulers. Thus smoking has continued to grow, despite ups and downs, to the present day where, this year(2010), there are expected to be almost 1.5 billion smokers worldwide. Two-thirds of the smokers (1 billion) are now coming from developing countries because smoking has peaked and is declining in developed countries.
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By around 1 BCE the Maya (who were located in Mexico and Central America) had found a variety of ways to use tobacco including smoking (in pipes and cigars), chewing and in snuff. The tobacco plants that the Maya used had very high levels of nicotine, which caused hallucinations when smoked. These hallucinations were used as a way to communicate with spirits and deceased relatives. They believed that their god Manitou revealed himself in the smoke.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in the late 1500’s, took up pipe smoking and began to introduce it to the upper classes in England. Form here, smoking made its way round the world - all the way to the Orient. He is the first recorded major public figure to promote the product for financial gain.
Around 1612, John Rolfe (Mr. Pocahontas), using seeds from Trinidad and Orinoco plants, succeeded in harvesting a more pleasing variety of tobacco - not the bitter Virginia weed used by Native Americans. And in 1622, Virginian farmers became the sole suppliers of tobacco to England and Ireland for 7 years. Because of the profits to be made, every acre of land was devoted to the crop to the neglect of other crops, thus dooming Virginia to a single crop economy dependent on slave labor.
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