History of smoking
The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in the
Cannabis was common in Eurasia before the arrival of tobacco, and is known to have been used since at least 5000 BC. Cannabis was not commonly smoked directly until the advent of tobacco in the 16th century. Before this cannabis and numerous other plants were vaporized on hot rocks or charcoal, burned as incense or in vessels and censers and inhaled indirectly. Evidence of direct smoking before the 16th century is contentious, with pipes thought to have been used to smoke cannabis dated to the 10th to 12th centuries found in Southeastern Africa.
Previously eaten for its medicinal properties,
More widespread cigarette usage as well as increased life expectancy during the 1920s made adverse health effects more noticeable. In 1929,
Early usages
Smoking has been practiced in one form or another since ancient times. Tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs were smoked all over the Americas as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals and originated in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes.
The Greek historian
They make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks inclined towards one another, and stretching around them woolen felts which they arrange so as to fit as close as possible: inside the booth a dish is placed upon the ground into which they put a number of red-hot stones and then add some hemp seed. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians delighted shout for joy.[2][3]
The Scythians had constructed a sweat lodge which has been used ritualistically by a number of different peoples. Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1947–1949 excavated a Scythian burial site that included a miniature version at Pazyryk in the Tien Shen Mountains. A leather pouch containing cannabis seed was attached to one pole of the tent. Coriander seeds have also been discovered in this Kurgan. Likely a mixture of cannabis seeds and coriander seeds was vaporized on the hot rocks to create a thick fragrant if not psychoactive smoke for ritual bathing.[2][4][5]
Robicsek posits that smoking in the Americas probably originated in incense-burning ceremonies, and was later adopted for pleasure or as a social tool.[6] The Maya employed it in classical times (at least from the 10th century) and the Aztecs included it in their mythology. The Aztec goddess Cihuacoahuatl had a body consisting of tobacco, and the priests that performed human sacrifices wore tobacco gourds as symbols of divinity. Even today certain Tzeltal Maya sacrifice 13 calabashes of tobacco at New Year.[7] The smoking of tobacco and various other hallucinogenic drugs was used to achieve trances and to come into contact with the spirit world. Reports from the first European explorers and conquistadors to reach the Americas tell of rituals where native priests smoked themselves into such high degrees of intoxication that it is unlikely that the rituals were limited to just tobacco. No concrete evidence of exactly what they smoked exists, but the most probable theory is that the tobacco was much stronger, consumed in extreme amounts, or was mixed with other, unknown psychoactive drugs.
In early North America the most common form of smoking by indigenous peoples was in pipes, either for social or religious purposes (which varied between different cultures). Sometimes pipes were smoked by representatives of warring tribes, and later with European settlers, as a gesture of goodwill, diplomacy, or to seal a peace treaty (hence the misnomer, "peace pipe"). In the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America, early forms of cigarettes including smoking reeds or cigars were the most common smoking tools. Only in modern times has the use of pipes become fairly widespread. Smoking is depicted in engravings and on various types of pottery as early as the 9th century, but it is not known whether it was limited to just the upper class and priests.[8]
After Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century tobacco smoking as a recreational activity became widespread. At the banquets of
Four baked clay, non-Arab produced pipes were found at the Iron Age Sebanzi Hill site in the Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Radiocarbon dating, along with related pottery, on the two oldest specimens indicates they were in use around the 10th to 12th century CE. The pipes have not been chemically analyzed, it has been argued they were used for smoking cannabis because they predate the introduction of tobacco. North of Zambia in Ethiopia, the remains of two ceramic waterpipe bowls were recovered from Lalibela Cave and dated to 640–500 BP. Both contained trace amounts of THC according to modified thin-layer chromatography. These reports are controversial because these dates predate the exploration of the New World by Spain and the supposed first introduction of tobacco, pipes, and smoking from the New World into Eurasia.[10]
Popularization of smoking
Europe
A Frenchman named Jean Nicot (from whose name the word nicotine derives) introduced tobacco to France in 1560 from Portugal. From there, it spread to England. The first report of a smoking Englishman is of a sailor in Bristol in 1556, seen "emitting smoke from his nostrils".[11] Like tea, coffee and opium, tobacco was just one of many intoxicants originally used as a form of medicine.[12]
Early modern European medical science was still to a great extent based on humorism, the idea that everything had a specific humoral nature that varied between hot and cold, dry and moist. Tobacco was often seen as something that was beneficial in its heating and drying properties and was assigned an endless list of beneficial properties. The concept of ingesting substances in the form of smoke was also entirely new and was met with both astonishment and great skepticism by Europeans.
The debate raged among priests, scientists and laymen about whether tobacco was a bane or boon and both sides had powerful supporters. The English king
It makes a man sober that was drunke. It refreshes a weary man, and yet makes a man hungry. Being taken when they goe to bed, it makes one sleepe soundly, and yet being taken when a man is sleepie and drowsie, it will, as they say, awake his braine, and quicken his understanding. As for curing of the Pockes, it serves for that use but among the pockie Indian slaves. Here in England it is refined, and will not deigne to cure heere any other than cleanly and gentlemanly diseases.[13]
South and Southeast Asia
Cannabis 'smoking' in India has been known since at least 2000 BC[14] and is first mentioned in the Atharvaveda, which dates back a few hundred years BC. Fumigation (dhupa) and fire offerings (homa) are prescribed in the Ayurveda for medical purposes and have been practiced for at least 3,000 years while smoking, dhumrapana (literally "drinking smoke"), has been practiced for at least 2,000 years. Always the cannabis was burned in an open vessel or censer rather than being smoked in a pipe or rolled into a cigarette.[15]
Fumigation and fire offerings have been performed with various substances, including clarified butter (ghee), fish offal, dried snake skins, and various pastes molded around incense sticks and lit to spread the smoke over wide areas. The practice of inhaling smoke was employed as a remedy for many different ailments. It was not limited to just cannabis; various plants and medicinal concoctions recommended to promote general health were also used.
Before modern times, smoking was done with
In
The industrial method passed the hand-rolled type in numbers in the mid-1980s and today kretek dominates up to 90% of the Indonesian cigarette market. The production is one of the largest sources of income for the Indonesian government and the production, which is spread out among some 500 independent manufacturers, employs some 180,000 people directly and over 10 million indirectly.[18]
The Middle East
Waterpipes were introduced into Persia and the Middle East in the 16th century from India. At first these pipes were used to smoke tobacco but very quickly cannabis flowers and hashish were mixed in. As tobacco use exploded across the Middle East and Northern Africa the hashish trade blossomed within a few decades. During the 16th and 17th centuries, hashish smoking quickly gained in popularity across Eurasia, from Turkey to Nepal, peaking during more modern times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Throughout the 18th century, the technique of gathering and drying cannabis plants to make hashish became increasingly widespread as mass production became necessary to satisfy the rapidly increasing Eurasian hashish trade.[19]
Today, the pipes often had several tubes to accommodate multiple smokers, or smokers would pass the nozzle around in the many smoking houses that functioned as social hubs in major centers of Muslim culture like Istanbul, Baghdad, and Cairo. Smoking, especially after the introduction of tobacco, was an essential component of Muslim society and culture and became integrated with important traditions like weddings and funerals, and was expressed in architecture, clothing, literature and poetry.[20]
There is a reference to tobacco in a
The waterpipe called Argila (or
The two substances in combination became very popular and were also smoked in normal "dry" pipes. The waterpipe, however, remained the most common smoking tool until the introduction of the cigarette in the 20th century. Foreign visitors to the region often remarked that smoking was immensely popular among Persians. On Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting when no food is eaten while the sun is up, among the first thing many Persians did after sunset was light their pipes.
Both sexes smoked, but for women it was a private affair enjoyed in the seclusion of private homes. In the 19th century Iran was one of the world's largest tobacco exporters, and the habit had by then become a national Iranian trait.[21]
East Asia
After the European discovery of the Americas, tobacco spread to Asia—first via Spanish and Portuguese sailors, and later by the Dutch and English. Spain and Portugal were active in Central and South America, where cigarettes and cigars were the smoking tools of choice, and their sailors smoked mostly cigars. The English and Dutch had contact with the pipe-smoking natives of North America, and adopted the habit. While the Southern Europeans began smoking earlier, it was the long-stemmed pipes of the northerners that became popular in East and Southeast Asia. Tobacco smoking arrived through expatriates in the Philippines and was introduced as early as the 1570s.[22]
By the early 17th century the kiseru, a long-stemmed Japanese pipe inspired by Dutch clay pipes, was common enough to be mentioned in Buddhist textbooks for children. The practice of tobacco smoking evolved as a part of the Japanese tea ceremony by employing many of the traditional objects used to burn incense for tobacco smoking. The kō-bon (the incense tray) became the tabako-bon, the incense burner evolved into a pot for tobacco embers and the incense pot became an ashtray.
During the Edo period, weapons were frequently used as objects of ostentation, indicating wealth and social status. Since only samurai were allowed to carry weapons, an elaborate kiseru slung from the waist served a similar purpose. After the Meiji restoration and abolition of the caste system, many craftsmen who previously decorated swords switched to designing kiserus and buckles for tobacco pouches. Though mass-production of cigarettes began in the late 19th century, not until after World War II did the kiseru go out of style and become an object of tradition and relative obscurity.[23]
Sub-Saharan Africa
Around 1600, French merchants introduced tobacco in what is now
Tobacco and cannabis were used, much like elsewhere in the world, to confirm social relations, but also created entirely new ones. In what is today Congo, a society called Bena Diemba ("People of Cannabis") was organized in the late 19th century in Lubuko ("The Land of Friendship").
The Bena Diemba were collectivist pacifists that rejected alcohol and herbal medicines in favor of cannabis.
Some groups, such as the Fang of Gabon consume eboga (Tabernanthe iboga), a mind-altering drug in religious rituals. In modern Africa, smoking is, in most areas, considered an expression of modernity, and many of the strong adverse opinions that prevail in the West receive less attention.[25]
Opium
In the 19th century, the practice of smoking opium became widespread in
Opium smoking later spread with
Social stigma
Early opposition
Ever since smoking was introduced outside of the Americas, there has been much vehement opposition to it. Arguments ranged from socio-economic, with tobacco called a usurper of good farmland, to purely moralistic, where many religiously devout individuals saw tobacco as another form of immoral intoxication. Many arguments were presented to the effect that smoking was harmful, and even if the critics were in the end right about many of their claims, the complaints were usually not based on scientific arguments – or if they were, these often relied on
Dr Eleazar Duncon, 1606, wrote that tobacco "...is so hurtful and dangerous to youth that it might have the pernicious nation expressed in the name, and that it were as well known by the name of Youths-bane as by the name of tobacco".[29]
Early 17th-century descriptive notices of various characteristic types and fashions of men portray tobacconists and smokers as individuals who suffer from false self-images and mistaken illusions about the properties of tobacco taking.[30] Though physicians such as Benjamin Rush claimed tobacco use (including smoking) negatively impacted health as far back as 1798,[31] not until the early 20th century did researchers begin to conduct serious medical studies.
Regulation of tobacco
In the late 19th century, automated cigarette-making machinery was invented. Factories, primarily located in the southern United States, geared up for the mass production of cigarettes at low cost. Cigarettes became elegant and fashionable among society men as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian. In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer was related to smoking.[33]
Prior to World War I, lung cancer was a rare disease that most physicians never saw in their careers.[34][35]
With the postwar rise in cigarette smoking, however, the significant increase in lung cancer promoted nascent investigations into the link between smoking and cancer. In 1929, German scientist Fritz Lickint published a formal statistical description of a lung cancer–tobacco link, based on a study that showed lung cancer sufferers were likely to be smokers.[36] Lickint also argued that tobacco use was the best way to explain the fact that lung cancer struck men four or five times more often than women (since women smoked much less).[36]
In Germany, anti-smoking groups, often associated with anti-liquor groups,[37] first published advocacy against the consumption of tobacco in the journal Der Tabakgegner (The Tobacco Opponent), by the Bohemian organization between 1912 and 1932. The Deutsche Tabakgegner (German Tobacco Opponents) was published in Dresden from 1919 to 1935, and was the second anti-tobacco journal.[38]
After
Nazi reproductive policy likewise strengthened the anti-smoking movement. Women who smoked were considered vulnerable to premature
Scientific rationalization
A true breakthrough came in 1948, when the British epidemiologist Richard Doll published the first major studies that demonstrated that smoking could cause serious health damage.[44] While some physicians in the United States once pitched cigarettes as health-improving products, some commentators now argue that it is unethical for physicians, as role models, to smoke at all.[45]
In 1950, Richard Doll published research in the
In 1964, the
In the 21st century, smoking has become stigmatized throughout Western societies,[49] but it is still a frequent practice among individuals, mostly from a lower socioeconomic background.[50] Research implies that the act of smoking generates intimidating impressions, and it has been suggested that individuals of low socioeconomic status are motivated to smoke by a desire to appear intimidating and forceful.
A recent development is the rise in popularity of
Since the popularisation of e-cigarettes, the tobacco industry protected its interests in a few ways:
- Developing their own smoking cessation tools, later proven to be ineffective and just as harmful as cigarettes.[55]
- Manufacturing their own e-cigarettes.
- Funding studies with the intent of discrediting e-cigarettes.[56]
- Interfering with the FDA[57]
In the United Kingdom, it was estimated in September 2018 that there are now 3,000,000 people who vape, 40% of whom are smokers trying to quit smoking. There is an ongoing debate in the country about whether e-cigarettes should be treated the same under the law, as regular cigarettes would. Amidst the debate, many businesses and institutions have put up signs saying "no vaping" next to their no smoking signs.[58]
Other substances
In the early 1980s, the majority of
This growth in popularity abated in the late 1990s. Described by criminologist Alfred Blumstein, this change resulted from four factors: tighter gun restrictions in areas where crack cocaine is prevalent, a shrinking market and its institutionalization, the robustness of the economy, and the availability of jobs.[60]
References
Notes
- ^ See Gately; Wilbert.
- ^ a b c Clarke 1993.
- .
- ^ Curry, Andrew (May 22, 2015). "Gold Artifacts Tell Tale of Drug-Fueled Rituals and 'Bastard Wars'". National Geographic News. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2015.
Belinski asked criminologists in nearby Stavropol to analyze a black residue inside the vessels. The results came back positive for opium and cannabis. The opium was drunk as part of a mixture and the cannabis was buried nearby in a vessel.
- ]
- ^ Robicsek (1978), p. 30.
- ^ Francis Robicsek, "Ritual Smoking in Central America" in Smoke, p. 33.
- ^ Francis Robicsek, "Ritual Smoking in Central America" in Smoke, p. 35.
- ^ Coe, pp. 74–81.
- ^ Clarke & Merlin, 2013.
- ^ Lloyd & Mitchinson
- ^ Tanya Pollard, "The Pleasures and Perils of Smoking in Early Modern England" in Smoke, p. 38
- ^ James I. "A Counterblaste to Tobacco".
- ^ Marihuana and medicine, p. 3
- ^ Clarke, Hashish, 1998
- ^ P. Ram Manohar, "Smoking and Ayurvedic Medicine in India" in Smoke, pp. 68–75
- ^ "Where there's smoke, there's Kretek: the cigarette industry in Indonesia". Website of US Embassy in Jakarta. June 3, 1999. Retrieved July 20, 2007.
- ^ Mark Hanusz, "A Century of Kretek" in Smoke, pp. 140–143
- ^ (Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany Clarke and Merlin, 2013)
- ^ Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun, "Introduction" in Smoke, p. 20–21
- ^ Rudi Mathee, "Tobacco in Iran" in Smoke, pp. 58–67
- ^ Barnabas Tatsuya Suzuki, "Tobacco Culture in Japan" in Smoke, pp. 76–83
- ^ Timon Screech, "Tobacco in Edo Period Japan" in Smoke, pp. 92-99
- ^ Allen F. Roberts, "Smoking in Sub-Saharan Africa" in Smoke, pp. 53–54
- ^ Allen F. Roberts, "Smoking in Sub-Saharan Africa" in Smoke, pp. 46–57
- ^ Jos Ten Berge, "The Belle Epoque of Opium in Smoke, p. 114
- ^ ISBN 9780307961730
- ^ Jos Ten Berge, "The Belle Epoque of Opium", in Smoke, p. 114
- ^ In a letter discovered in c.2009 by Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) librarians,"Doctor's 400-year-old letter strikes chord with Holyrood plan to curb tobacco sale". The Scotsman. 19 September 2009.
- ^ 17th century books of characters. See Halliwell
- ^ Goldberg, p. 147
- ^ "Grimault's Cigarettes of Cannabis Indica Sales Brochure". The Herb Museum. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
- ^ Isaac Adler. "Primary Malignant Growth of the Lung and Bronchi". (1912) New York, Longmans, Green. pp. 3–12. Reprinted (1980) by A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
- PMID 11606795.
- PMID 15961694.
- ^ a b Commentary: Schairer and Schoniger's forgotten tobacco epidemiology and the Nazi quest for racial purity - Proctor 30 (1): 31 - International Journal of Epidemiology
- ^ Proctor 1999, p. 178
- ^ Proctor 1999, p. 177
- ^ a b Proctor 1999, p. 219
- ^ Clark, Briggs & Cooke 2005, p. 1374
- ^ Proctor 1999, p. 173
- ^ Proctor 1999, p. 187
- S2CID 8076552. Archived from the originalon 2012-06-30. Retrieved 2008-11-15.
- ^ Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun, "Introduction" in Smoke, p. 25
- ^ JM Appel. Smoke and Mirrors: One Case for Ethical Obligations of the Physician as Public Role Model Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 01, January 2009, pp 95-100.
- PMID 14772469.
- PMID 13160495.
- PMID 15213107.
- PMID 26439764.
- S2CID 145745440.
- ^ "Using e-cigarettes to stop smoking". 24 November 2021.
- PMID 33106908.
- S2CID 201869701.
- PMID 31513559.
- ^ Glantz, Stanton A. (2020), "PMI's own data shows IQOS is as bad for lungs as a cigarette, including depressing immune function", ucsf.edu, University of California, San Francisco - Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, retrieved 15 Jul 2023
- ^ "Vaping companies are using the same old tricks as Big Tobacco". 16 November 2017.
- ^ Lipton, Eric (2 September 2016). "A Lobbyist Wrote the Bill. Will the Tobacco Industry Win Its E-Cigarette Fight?". The New York Times.
- S2CID 37498711. Retrieved 2017-09-22.
- US Department of Justice, 1991, USDoJ.gov webpage: DoJ-DEA-History-1985-1990 Archived 2006-08-23 at the Wayback Machine.
- JSTOR 1143998.
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- Ashes to Ashes: The History of Smoking and Health (1998) edited by S. Lock, L.A. Reynolds and E.M. Tansey 2nd ed. Rodopi. ISBN 90-420-0396-0
- Clarke, Robert Connell and Mark D Merlin (2013) 'Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany' (ISBN 978-0-520-27048-0)
- Clarke, Robert Connell (1998 and 2010) 'Hashish' ISBN 978-0-929349-07-7
- Coe, Sophie D. (1994) America's first cuisines ISBN 0-292-71159-X
- Frieden, Thomas R. et al. The Health Consequences of Smoking: 50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General (2014) online
- Gately, Iain (2003) Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization ISBN 0-8021-3960-4
- Goldberg, Ray (2005) Drugs Across the Spectrum. 5th ed. Thomson Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0-495-01345-5
- Greaves, Lorraine (2002) High Culture: Reflections on Addiction and Modernity. edited by Anna Alexander and Mark S. Roberts. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-5553-X
- James I of England, A Counterblaste to Tobacco
- Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006
- Marihuana and Medicine (1999), editor: Gabriel Nahas ISBN 0-89603-593-X
- Phillips, J. E. (1983). "African Smoking and Pipes". The Journal of African History. 24 (3): 302–319. S2CID 161397712.
- Robicsek, Francis (1978) The Smoking Gods: Tobacco in Maya Art, History, and Religion ISBN 0-8061-1511-4
- Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (2004) edited by Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun ISBN 1-86189-200-4
- Wilbert, Johannes (1993) Tobacco and Shamanism in South America ISBN 0-300-05790-3
- Proctor, Robert (1999). The Nazi War on Cancer. ISBN 978-0-691-07051-3..
- Clark, George Norman; Briggs, Asa; Cooke, A. M. (2005). "A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London". British Medical Journal. 1 (5427). Oxford University Press: 79–82. PMID 14218483..
- U.S. Surgeon General. The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2004), 956pp.
External links
- Media related to History of smoking at Wikimedia Commons