Smoking kills…but that doesn’t stop more than a
billion people of the Earth’s population from smoking.
In 2021 the global tobacco market was valued at 849 billion dollars,
with an expected growth in the coming years. But what is the history of this vice?
Where did it all began? The
year is roughly 10.278 BC, a family of early humans settled camp in what is
today northwestern Utah, they have walked many miles to get here, probably lured
by the promise of big game like mammoths. In this camp they got a fire going, carved up
a few ducks and had a nice meal. And after their meal they apparently … enjoyed some tobacco.
Or so it seems.., recently archeologists in a site referred
to as Wishbone found this hearth from which they bagged the sediment and studied it in the lab.
Here they submerged the mixture in water, with the help of which they separated
the organic from the nonorganic material. From the material they identified the charred
remnants of no less than four tobacco seeds. Radiocarbon dating showed that the entire
contents, including the tobacco were approximately 12,300 years old.
The gaps in the story of tobacco are wide and the earliest next record of its use is from the
1st century BC when the Mayan civilization of central America used the leaves of the genus
Nicotiana plant a.k.a. tobacco for smoking, during sacred and religious ceremonies.
The next stage of this journey takes us to Columbus and his arrival in the Americas,
by which time the natives had already started using tobacco in pipes, cigars and snuffs.
The eastern North American tribes have historically carried tobacco in pouches
for trading as well as for smoking it in so-called pipe ceremonies,
which were done as either sacred ceremonies or as a method to seal a treaty or an agreement.
The Spanish were the first to bring tobacco to Europe around the year 1528, it was a great
success. So great a success that only 5 years later there were already rich tobacco merchants
ready to supply for the increase in demand. in the year 1559.
Jean Nicot was the French ambassador in Lisbon, Portugal.
Nicot was worried about Francis the II, his kings recurring headaches and decided to send
the king samples of leaves and seeds of tobacco, with instructions to use
it through inhaling it as snuff. It was a great success, the Kings
headaches were reportedly marvellously cured … but he did die a year later.
By the year 1570 botanists were referring to tobacco as Nicotiana, in honor of the French
ambassador Jean Nicot, a name we still use today. Tobacco had reached England by 1573 it gained
popularity instantly and by the year 1595 a little known poet by the name Anthony Chute published
Tabaco a discussion on the benefits of tobacco. From Chute’s Tabaco we have the first known image
of a man smoking, history had been made. However the King, James I was not pleased,
he was angry about tobacco, so angry that he wrote a famous polemic titled A Counterblaste to Tobacco
in 1604 in which he denounces tobacco use as” "[a] custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose,
harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof,
neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.”
Honestly he wasn’t too far from the truth.
The introduction of tobacco didn’t go through such a rough patch in the Netherlands and in southern
Germany. In Italy a cardinal called Crescenzio introduced smoking of tobacco in about 1610,
after seeing it in England. Surprisingly the Roman Catholic Church did not condemn tobacco as the
English monarch did, however the Pope justifiably threatened with excommunication would be smokers
inside a church. Tobacco was banned
in Russia in 1634, however Peter the Great revoked all bans when he became monarch in
1689 granting exclusive rights of import to a trading company called Muscovy Company,
which would pay annual tribute to the crown a share of the profit.
By the late 16th century tobacco also arrived in the Ottoman Empire, after which it became there a
commonly prescribed medicine for many ailments. Later on it lost popularity and it was blamed
rightfully for dizziness, fatigue, dulling of the senses and for leaving a foul taste in the mouth.
Sultan Murad IV had had enough and banned smoking in the Ottoman Empire in 1633 But his successor,
the aptly named Ibrahim the Mad revoked the ban. From the 17th through the 19th century the
American colonies served as the great crop growing land for Europe’s crazy tobacco needs.
The high demand in Europe raised the price of tobacco which in turn helped
economically develop the American colonies. By the late 19th century cigarettes were known
as coffin nails but the link between lung cancer and smoking wasn't established until
the 20th century. German doctors were the first to make the link, and it led to the
first antitobacco movement in Germany. A true breakthrough came in 1948,
when the British physiologist Richard Doll published the first major studies that proved
that smoking could cause serious health damage And by the 1980s nicotine dependence was for the
first time included in the diagnostic and statisticial manual of mental disorders.
There is a light at the end of this smoking tunnel, global smoking rates HAVE been declining
and almost all countries have programs to help users quit this affliction.
We can only hope that the history of tobacco goes up in smoke.