Tobacco smoking
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and the inhalation of the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or released from the mouth, as is done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onward but embedded itself in certain strata of several societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus.
Smoking is the most common method of consuming tobacco, and tobacco is the most common substance smoked. The agricultural product is often mixed with additives and then combusted. The resulting smoke, which contains various active substances, the most significant of which is the addictive psychostimulant drug nicotine, is absorbed through the alveoli in the lungs or the oral mucosa. Many substances in cigarette smoke, chiefly nicotine, trigger chemical reactions in nerve endings, which heighten heart rate, alertness and reaction time, among other things. Dopamine and endorphins are released, which are often associated with pleasure, leading to addiction.
German scientists identified a link between smoking and lung cancer in the late 1920s, leading to the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history, albeit one truncated by the collapse of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. In 1950, British researchers demonstrated a clear relationship between smoking and cancer. Evidence continued to mount in the 1960s, which prompted political action against the practice. Rates of consumption since 1965 in the developed world have either peaked or declined. However, they continue to climb in the developing world. As of 2008 to 2010, tobacco is used by about 49% of men and 11% of women aged 15 or older in fourteen low-income and middle-income countries, with about 80% of this usage in the form of smoking. The gender gap tends to be less pronounced in lower age groups. According to the World Health Organization, 8 million annual deaths are caused by tobacco smoking.
Many smokers begin during adolescence or early adulthood. A 2009 study of first smoking experiences of seventh-grade students found out that the most common factor leading students to smoke is cigarette advertisements. Smoking by parents, siblings, and friends also encourages students to smoke. During the early stages, a combination of perceived pleasure acting as positive reinforcement and desire to respond to social peer pressure may offset the unpleasant symptoms of initial use, which typically include nausea and coughing. After an individual has smoked for some years, the avoidance of nicotine withdrawal symptoms and negative reinforcement become the key motivations to continue.
History
Use in ancient cultures
One archeological find raises the possibility of tobacco-smoking in the area of present-day Nevada about 12,000 years ago.Systematic tobacco use dates back to as early as 5000–3000 BC when the agricultural product began to be cultivated in Mesoamerica and South America; consumption later came to involve burning the plant substance, either by accident or with the intent of exploring other means of consumption. The practice worked its way into shamanistic rituals. Many ancient civilizations – such as the Babylonians, the Indians, and the Chinese – burned incense during religious rituals. Smoking in the Americas probably had its origins in the incense-burning ceremonies of shamans but was later adopted for pleasure or as a social tool. The smoking of tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs was used to achieve trances and to come into contact with the spirit world. Also, to stimulate respiration, tobacco-smoke enemas were used.
Eastern North American tribes would carry large amounts of tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item and would often smoke it in ceremonial pipes, either in sacred ceremonies or to seal bargains. Adults as well as children enjoyed the practice. It was believed that tobacco was a gift from the Creator and that the exhaled tobacco smoke was capable of carrying one's thoughts and prayers to the Great Spirit.
Apart from smoking, tobacco was used as medicine. As a pain killer, it was used for earache and toothache and occasionally as a poultice. Desert Indians regarded smoking as a cure for colds, especially if the tobacco was mixed with the leaves of the small Desert sage, Salvia dorrii, or the root of Indian balsam or cough root, Leptotaenia multifida, the addition of which was thought to be particularly good for asthma and tuberculosis.
Popularization
In 1612, six years after the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, John Rolfe was credited as the first settler to successfully raise tobacco as a cash crop. The demand quickly grew as tobacco, referred to as "brown gold", revived the Virginia joint stock company from its failed gold expeditions. To meet demands from the Old World, tobacco was grown in succession, quickly depleting the soil. This became a motivator to settle west into the unknown continent, and likewise an expansion of tobacco production.Frenchman Jean Nicot introduced tobacco to France in 1560, and tobacco then spread to England. The first report of a smoking Englishman is of a sailor in Bristol in 1556, seen "emitting smoke from his nostrils". Like tea, coffee, and opium, tobacco was just one of many intoxicants that were originally used as a form of medicine. Tobacco was introduced around 1600 by French merchants in what today is modern-day Gambia and Senegal. At the same time, caravans from Morocco brought tobacco to the areas around Timbuktu, and the Portuguese brought the commodity to southern Africa, establishing the popularity of tobacco throughout all of Africa by the 1650s.
Soon after its introduction to the Old World, tobacco came under frequent criticism from state and religious leaders. James VI and I, King of Scotland and England, produced the treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, and also introduced excise duty on the product. Murad IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 1623–40, was among the first to attempt a smoking ban by claiming it was a threat to public morals and health. The Chongzhen Emperor of China issued an edict banning smoking two years before his death and the overthrow of the Ming dynasty. Later, the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty would proclaim smoking "a more heinous crime than that even of neglecting archery". In Edo period Japan, some of the earliest tobacco plantations were scorned by the shogunate as being a threat to the military economy by letting valuable farmland go to waste for the use of a recreational drug instead of being used to plant food crops.
Religious leaders have often been prominent among those who considered smoking immoral or outright blasphemous. In 1634, the Patriarch of Moscow forbade the sale of tobacco, and sentenced men and women who flouted the ban to have their nostrils slit and their backs flayed. Pope Urban VIII likewise condemned smoking in holy places in a papal bull of 1624. Despite some concerted efforts, restrictions and bans were largely ignored. When James I of England, a staunch smoking opponent and the author of A Counterblaste to Tobacco, tried to curb the new trend by enforcing a 4000% increase of tobacco taxation in 1604 it was unsuccessful, as suggested by the presence of around 7,000 tobacco outlets in London by the early 17th century. From this point on, for some centuries, several administrations withdrew from efforts at discouragement and instead turned the tobacco trade and cultivation into sometimes lucrative government monopolies.
By the mid-17th century, most major civilizations had been introduced to tobacco smoking and, in many cases, had already assimilated it into the native culture, despite some continued attempts on the part of rulers to eliminate the practice with penalties or fines. Tobacco, both product and plant, followed the major trade routes to major ports and markets, and then into the hinterlands. The English language term smoking appears to have entered currency in the late 18th century, before which less abbreviated descriptions of the practice such as drinking smoke were also in use.
Growth in the US remained stable until the American Civil War in the 1860s when the primary agricultural workforce shifted from slavery to sharecropping. This, along with a change in demand, accompanied the industrialization of cigarette production as craftsman James Bonsack created a machine in 1881 to partially automate their manufacture.
Social attitudes and public health
In 1912 and 1932 in Germany, anti-smoking groups, often associated with anti-liquor groups, first published advocacy against the consumption of tobacco in the journal Der Tabakgegner. In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published a paper containing formal statistical evidence of a lung cancer–tobacco link. During the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler condemned his earlier smoking habit as a waste of money, and later with stronger assertions. This movement was further strengthened with Nazi reproductive policy as women who smoked were viewed as unsuitable to be wives and mothers in a German family. In the 20th century, smoking was common. Social events like the smoke night promoted the habit.The anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany did not reach across enemy lines during the Second World War, as anti-smoking groups quickly lost popular support. By the end of the Second World War, American cigarette manufacturers quickly reentered the German black market. Illegal smuggling of tobacco became prevalent, and leaders of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign were silenced. As part of the Marshall Plan, the United States shipped free tobacco to Germany; with 24,000 tons in 1948 and 69,000 tons in 1949. Per capita yearly cigarette consumption in post-war Germany steadily rose from 460 in 1950 to 1,523 in 1963. By the end of the 20th century, anti-smoking campaigns in Germany were unable to exceed the effectiveness of the Nazi-era climax in the years 1939–41 and German tobacco health research was described by Robert N. Proctor as "muted".
In 1950, Richard Doll published research in the British Medical Journal showing a close link between smoking and lung cancer. Beginning in December 1952, the magazine Reader's Digest published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.
In 1954, the British Doctors Study, a prospective study of some 40 thousand doctors for about 2.5 years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related. In January 1964, the United States Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health likewise began suggesting the relationship between smoking and cancer.
As scientific evidence mounted in the 1980s, tobacco companies claimed contributory negligence as the adverse health effects were previously unknown or lacked substantial credibility. Health authorities sided with these claims up until 1998, from which they reversed their position. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, originally between the four largest US tobacco companies and the attorneys general of 46 states, restricted certain types of tobacco advertisement and required payments for health compensation, which later amounted to the largest civil settlement in United States history.
Social campaigns have been instituted in many places to discourage smoking, such as Canada's National Non-Smoking Week.
From 1965 to 2006, rates of smoking in the United States declined from 42% to 20.8%. The majority of those who quit were professional, affluent men. Although the per-capita number of smokers decreased, the average number of cigarettes consumed per person per day increased from 22 in 1954 to 30 in 1978. This paradoxical event suggests that those who quit smoking smoked less, while those who continued to smoke moved to smoke more light cigarettes. The trend has been paralleled by many industrialized nations as rates have either leveled-off or declined. In the developing world, however, tobacco consumption continued to rise at 3.4% in 2002. In Africa, smoking is in most areas considered to be modern, and many of the strong adverse opinions that prevail in the West receive much less attention. In 2008, Russia, Indonesia, Belarus, Ukraine, Laos, Greece, Jordan, Tonga, China, and North Korea were ranked the first by adjusted prevalence estimate of the percent of male population smoking tobacco.
As of 2025, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal are on track to achieve at least a 30% relative reduction in tobacco use, according to the WHO global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco use 2000–2024. The WHO South-East Asia Region has shown the fastest progress globally, already meeting the global reduction target by 2021 through strong policies, taxation, and cessation initiatives. Despite this success, over 322 million adults in the region continue to use tobacco, underscoring the need for continued regulation and public health action.