Tobacco

The beginnings of tobacco

In Antiquity, European civilisations did not yet know tobacco, but they already used instruments such as the pipe to burn herbs. Some herbs were intended for medicine (disinfecting, calming and so on), others for religious worship (incense, smoke).

Native Americans, for their part, used tobacco as a medicinal plant, but above all as a divine plant that allowed them to communicate with the gods during rituals.

Native Americans had several ways of using their tobacco:

• Drawing in the smoke of the plant burnt with charcoal,
• Making “cigars”: hollow sticks filled with finely chopped leaves,
• Calumets, a kind of long pipe,
• A tobacco powder to chew or inhale,
• Leaves to chew

The birth of the Cuban myth and the spread of tobacco to Europe

In 1493, the Spanish missionary Fray Romano Pane sent tobacco to Charles V. Spain then chose Cuba to grow its tobacco. Later, when the ship docked on the Portuguese coast, the crew, which had taken up tobacco, reported its effects to the whole of Europe.

From 1520 onwards, the first tobacco seeds reached Europe, and from then on they were grown for use as a medicinal plant.

Jean Nicot (nicotine was named after him) was France’s ambassador at the time. By sending tobacco leaves to Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France, he made the spread of tobacco in France possible. Tobacco was then prescribed as a plant said to cure headaches, and the queen ordered it to be cultivated. It was subsequently renamed “the Queen’s herb” or “the Catherinaire”.

The whole of the royal court took up the fashion and tobacco quickly became very widespread. It developed at the same time in Italy, Germany, England, Turkey, Morocco, Japan and China, so that by the beginning of the 17^th century tobacco was known throughout the world.

The beginnings of the cigarette

Cigars began to be rolled in Europe in the 17th century, with chopped and dried leaves wrapped in paper. In 1830, industrial cigarettes appeared and began to compete with chewing tobacco. Consumption of cigarettes reached its peak with the Second World War, when they became available to everyone: women, men, the young and the old.

And what about the State?

In 1629 Richelieu created the first tax on tobacco. Colbert, in charge of finances under Louis XIV, went on to create the State monopoly on the sale of tobacco, then the monopoly on its manufacture in 1681. It was only in 2000 that the French State withdrew from Seita (Société d’Exploitation Industrielle des Tabacs et des Allumettes), which held that monopoly. Today the State collects around 10 billion euros through tobacco tax, and spends as much on the social costs associated with it (illness, sick leave, prevention campaigns and so on).

The history of tobacco does not stop there; it keeps changing, if only through the invention of the electronic cigarette or, closer to tobacco, the tube-filling machine.