Tobacco


Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. Seventy-nine species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used in some countries.
Dried tobacco leaves are mainly used for smoking in cigarettes and cigars, as well as pipes and shishas. They can also be consumed as snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, and snus.
Tobacco contains the highly addictive stimulant alkaloid nicotine as well as harmala alkaloids. Due to the widespread availability and legality of tobacco, nicotine is one of the most widely used recreational drugs. Tobacco use is a cause or risk factor for many deadly diseases, especially those affecting the heart, liver, and lungs, as well as many cancers. In 2008, the World Health Organization named tobacco use as the world's single greatest preventable cause of death.

Etymology

The English word tobacco originates from the Spanish word tabaco. The precise origin of this word is disputed, but it is generally thought to have derived, at least in part, from Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. In Taíno, it was said to mean either a roll of tobacco leaves, or to tabago, a kind of Y-shaped pipe used for sniffing tobacco smoke.
However, perhaps coincidentally, similar words in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian were used from 1410 for certain medicinal herbs. These probably derived from the Arabic طُبّاق , a word reportedly dating to the ninth century, referring to various herbs.

History

Cultural significance

According to Haudenosaunee mythology, tobacco first grew out of Earth Woman's head after she died giving birth to her twin sons, Sapling and Flint.

Traditional use

Tobacco has long been used in the Americas, with some cultivation sites in Mexico dating back to 1400–1000 BCE. Many Native American tribes traditionally grow and use tobacco. Historically, people from the Northeast Woodlands cultures have carried tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item. It was smoked both socially and ceremonially, such as to seal a peace treaty or trade agreement. In some Native cultures, tobacco is seen as a gift from the Creator, with the ceremonial tobacco smoke carrying one's thoughts and prayers to the Creator.
Some Native Americans consider tobacco to be a medicine and advocate for its respectful usage, rather than a commercial one.

Popularization

Following the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas, tobacco became increasingly popular as a trade item. In 1559, Francisco Hernández de Toledo, Spanish chronicler of the Indies, was the first European to bring tobacco seeds to the Old World, following orders of King Philip II of Spain. These seeds were planted in the outskirts of Toledo, more specifically in an area known as "Los Cigarrales" named after the continuous plagues of cicadas. Before the development of the lighter Virginia and white burley strains of tobacco, the smoke was too harsh to be inhaled. Small quantities were smoked at a time, using a pipe like the midwakh or kiseru, or newly invented waterpipes such as the bong or the hookah. Tobacco became so popular that the English colony of Jamestown used it as currency and began exporting it as a cash crop; tobacco is often credited as being the export that saved Virginia from ruin. While a lucrative product, the growing expansion of tobacco demand was intimately tied to the history of slavery in the Caribbean.
The alleged benefits of tobacco also contributed to its success. The astronomer Thomas Harriot, who accompanied Sir Richard Grenville on his 1585 expedition to Roanoke Island, thought that the plant "openeth all the pores and passages of the body" so that the bodies of the natives "are notably preserved in health, and know not many grievous diseases, wherewithal we in England are often times afflicted."
Production of tobacco for smoking, chewing, and snuffing became a major industry in Europe and its colonies by 1700.
Tobacco has been a major cash crop in Cuba and in other parts of the Caribbean since the 18th century. Cuban cigars are world-famous.
Cigarettes became increasingly popular in the late 19th century when James Bonsack invented a machine to automate cigarette production. This increase in production allowed tremendous growth in the tobacco industry until the health revelations of the 20th century.

Contemporary

Following the scientific revelations of the early-to-mid-20th century, tobacco was condemned as a health hazard and eventually became recognized as a cause of cancer, as well as other respiratory and circulatory diseases. In the United States, this led to the adoption of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which settled the many lawsuits by the U.S. states in exchange for a combination of yearly payments to the states and voluntary restrictions on advertising and marketing of tobacco products.
In the 1970s, Brown & Williamson crossbred tobacco to produce Y1, a strain containing an unusually high nicotine content, nearly doubling from 3.2–3.5% to 6.5%. In the 1990s, this prompted the Food and Drug Administration to allege that tobacco companies were intentionally manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes.
The desire of many addicted smokers to quit has led to the development of tobacco cessation products.
In 2003, in response to growth of tobacco use in developing countries, the World Health Organization successfully rallied 168 countries to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The convention is designed to push for effective legislation and enforcement in all countries to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco. Between 2019 and 2021, concerns about increased COVID-19 health risks due to tobacco consumption facilitated smoking reduction and cessation.

Biology

''Nicotiana''

Many species of tobacco are in the genus of herbs Nicotiana. It is part of the nightshade family indigenous to North and South America, Australia, south west Africa, and the South Pacific.
Most nightshades contain varying amounts of nicotine, a powerful neurotoxin to insects. However, tobacco contains a much higher concentration of nicotine than the others. Unlike many other Solanaceae species, they do not contain tropane alkaloids, which are often poisonous to humans and other animals.
Despite containing enough nicotine and other compounds such as germacrene and anabasine and other piperidine alkaloids to deter most herbivores, a number of such animals have evolved the ability to feed on Nicotiana species without being harmed. Nonetheless, tobacco is unpalatable to many species due to its other attributes. For example, although the cabbage looper is a generalist pest, tobacco's gummosis and trichomes can harm early larvae survival. As a result, some tobacco plants have become established as invasive weeds in some places.

Types

The types of tobacco include:
  • Aromatic fire-cured is cured by smoke from open fires. In the United States, it is grown in northern middle Tennessee, central Kentucky, and Virginia. Fire-cured tobacco grown in Kentucky and Tennessee is used in some chewing tobaccos, moist snuff, some cigarettes, and as a condiment in pipe tobacco blends. Another fire-cured tobacco is Latakia, which is produced from oriental varieties of N. tabacum. The leaves are cured and smoked over smoldering fires of local hardwoods and aromatic shrubs in Cyprus and Syria.
  • Brightleaf tobacco is commonly known as "Virginia tobacco", often regardless of the state where it is planted. Prior to the American Civil War, most tobacco grown in the US was fire-cured dark-leaf. Sometime after the War of 1812, demand for a milder, lighter, more aromatic tobacco arose. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland all innovated with milder varieties of the tobacco plant. Farmers discovered that brightleaf tobacco needs thin, starved soil, and those who could not grow other crops found that they could grow tobacco. Confederate soldiers traded it with each other and Union soldiers, and developed quite a taste for it. At the end of the war, the soldiers went home and a national market had developed for the local crop.
  • Broadleaf, a dark tobacco varietal family popular for producing enormous, resilient, and thick wrapper leaves.
  • Burley tobacco is an air-cured tobacco used predominantly in cigarette production, but also in pipe tobacco as a balance to Virginias and other leaves high in sugar content. In the U.S., burley tobacco plants are started from pelletized seeds placed in polystyrene trays floated on a bed of fertilized water in March or April.
  • Cavendish is more a process of curing and a method of cutting tobacco than a type, but is used to thicken flavors from other tobaccos that might lack a body. The processing and the cut are used to bring out the natural sweet taste in the tobacco. Cavendish can be produced from any tobacco type but is usually one of, or a blend of, Kentucky, Virginia and burley and is most commonly used for pipe tobacco.
  • Criollo tobacco is primarily used in the making of cigars. It was by most accounts one of the original Cuban tobaccos that emerged around the time of Columbus.
  • Dokha is a tobacco originally grown in Iran, mixed with leaves, bark and herbs for smoking in a midwakh.
  • Perique was developed in 1824 through the technique of pressure-fermentation of local tobacco by a farmer, Pierre Chenet. Considered the truffle of pipe tobaccos, it is used as a component in many blended pipe tobaccos but is too strong to be smoked pure. At one time the freshly moist Perique was also chewed, but it is no longer sold for this purpose. It is typically blended with pure Virginia to lend spice, strength and coolness to the blend.
  • Shade tobacco is cultivated in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Early Connecticut colonists acquired from the Native Americans the habit of smoking tobacco in pipes, and began cultivating the plant commercially, though the Puritans referred to it as the "evil weed". The Connecticut shade industry has weathered some major catastrophes, including a devastating hailstorm in 1929 and an epidemic of brown spot fungus in 2000, and is in danger of disappearing altogether, given the increase in the value of land.
  • Turkish tobacco is a sun-cured, highly aromatic, small-leafed variety grown in Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Originally grown in regions historically part of the Ottoman Empire, it is also known as "oriental". Many of the early brands of cigarettes were made mostly or entirely of Turkish tobacco. Its main use evolved to be included in blends of pipe and especially cigarette tobacco.
  • White burley air-cured leaf was found to be milder than other types of tobacco. In 1865 George Webb of Brown County, Ohio, planted red burley seeds he had purchased and found a few of the seedlings had a whitish, sickly look, which became white burley.
  • Wild tobacco is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico and parts of South America. Its botanical name is Nicotiana rustica.