Legend says that Columbus again sailed around the West Indies (his obsession with finding India needs to be admired, notwithstanding his habit of calling natives of the US as Indians, and naming Islands as the Indies, as a measure of "If you can't find it, just name it! Voila!" He even named Trinidad and Tobago, the latter in honor, it seems of tobacco.
Around the 1500's tobacco was a sensation in Europe, and in Germany, a Dr. Michael Bernhard Valentini had written up s scholarly book, on what else, numerous different types of clusters, or enemas, out of which the tobacco enema was great for colic, nephritis, hysteria, hernia, and dysentery.
Dr Monardes, from Seville , Spain, wrote a book describing 36 maladies that tobacco could cure.
Not to be left behind, a bunch of English seafarers like Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and his cousins, took it upon themselves to introduce tobacco into England. The first tobacco shipment reached Britain in 1565.
Its amazing how Britain , who gave us the Magna Carta, Parliament, and other wonderful things, also was the forerunner is showing how rulers could do a complete about turn, when considering rules, that were considered to be potentially beneficial to the state's and individual royal "treasuries". In 1604, King James the first, in the great tradition of the Surgeon generals to come , published a treatise called "A Counter Blast to Tobacco". The tobacco weed was associated with , Satan, and he simply banned tobacco from the pubs of those days. In a sort of full turnaround , that reminds us about certain people in certain high places today , he then allowed himself to be convinced to overturn the ban. Not only that, but he nationalized the tobacco industry, and proceeded to reduce the taxes on it. Rings a bell?
The 1600's were an exciting time.
Across the world, rulers had much more guts and spirit compared to James the first.
The first Romanov Czar in Russia, Michael Feodorovich, declared tobacco consumption a deadly sin. The normal punishments were as drastic as slitting of the lips, and sometimes, even a potentially fatal and terrible flogging. In Turkey, Persia, and India, the death penalty was the usual punishment.
So many people pointing out that smoking was bad. In 1624, based on the great logic that tobacco use prompts sneezing, which too closely resembles sexual ecstasy, Pope Urban VIII issued a worldwide smoking ban and threatened excommunication for those who smoked in holy places. A century later, snuff-loving Pope Benedict XIII repealed all papal smoking bans, and in 1779, the Vatican opened its own tobacco factory. Smoking, per se, was then extremely popular in Europe and the Americas.
Sultan Murad IV , in 1634, prohibited smoking in the Ottoman Empire; as many as eighteen people a day were executed for breaking the law. The Sultan had a successor called, of all things, Ibrahim the Mad, and he lived up to his name, by lifting the ban in 1647; tobacco became an indulgence of the upper echelons of society, and along with coffee, wine, and opium, became, in the words of a historian, "as one of the four cushions on the sofa of pleasure.". Some sofa.
By the middle 1800's, Cuban cigars (as they were then known) were sold by Robert Lewis in St James's Street. In a shining example of how bad habits dont take too long to spread, Russians and Turks learned about cigarettes from the French, who in turn may have learned about smoking from the Spanish. (Paupers in Seville were making a form of cigarette, known as a "papalette", from the butts of discarded cigars and papers as early as the 17th century.)
In 1891, the Shah of Iran, offered some unnecessary trading concessions to England. The people got mad. The then reigning Ayatollah, as a sign of , probably , times to come, issued a Fatwa, and declared that Shiites would have nothing to do with tobacco. This sparked the Tobacco Revolution, the Shah versus the clergy. The Shah ended up revoking the deals with England, and the following year everybody forgot everything and happily started smoking again.
Then, tobacco. Today Oil. Tomorrow, what?
By 1900's smoking became a lifestyle thing. Not having much to enjoy in terms of fashion, otherwise, men in England started wearing "smoking jackets" in an endeavor to look important while having an after dinner smoke along with a bottle of port.
Thankfully, someone got some sense in the early 1900's.
Actually, as early as 1858, the Lancet, had published a paper on the health dangers of smoking. But with all the bucolic lifestyles, no one paid any attention.
In 1895 , North Dakota, banned the sale of cigarettes. Over the next 26 years , 14 other states brought in anti smoking laws. A lady by the name of Lucy Gaston, who was an anti-smoking crusader, stood for President on 1920. The same year Warren Harding won the Republican nomination in a smoke filled room filled with the election bosses, and by 1927, most of the anti-smoking legislation was repealed.
