Ep. 36 Tobacco & Cigarettes

This week I take a look at cigarettes and tobacco. I find out where tobacco comes from. Come along for the ride this week as I ask, tobacco & cigarettes, how did that happen? History of tobacco Depending on who you ask the first people to discover and use tobacco were the people from mesoamerica. Mesoamerica is the land starting at southern Mexico and into Central America. They have found evidence that they had been using it for 12,000 years. This goes against what people have thought for a long time which is that tobacco has been growing wild in the Americas for nearly 8000 years. Its scientific name is Nicotiana Tabacum. This, but dried. American tribes carried tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item, as well as smoking it in pipe ceremonies, whether for sacred ceremonies or those to seal a treaty or agreement. Among the Cree and Ojibwe of Canada and the north-central United States, it is offered to the Creator, with prayers, and is used in sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, and is presented as a gift.  A gift of tobacco is traditional when asking an Ojibwe elder a question of a spiritual nature. Explaining the Cigarette: Wikipedia defines a cigarette as a narrow cylinder containing burnable material, typically tobacco that is rolled into thins paper for smoking. The word cigarette is French for little cigar. Nicotine is defined as a naturally produced alkaloid in the night shade family of plants. Night shades, as they are called are a family of flowering plants that have a wide variety of organisms. Its a very diverse family. It includes tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant bell peppers and a bunch of other stuff. Go look it up. Imagine that “family” at thanksgiving. Before this you would have never imagined a tobacco going to dinner with a tomato. You’re welcome. This also means that there are trace amounts of nicotine in all of those foods. So that explains you baked potato people. Tobacco in Europe: The Spanish introduced tobacco to Europeans in about 1528. When it was first introduced to Europe via Spain the tobacco was wrapped in corn husk, probably the corn silk. Tobacco would also be sniffed in the form of snuff. If you’re not familiar with snuff, it is the inhalation of dried tobacco though the nose. One of the first people who got their hands on the snuff, get it hands on the snuff, instead of snuff. Dad joke supreme. 18th century Chinese snuff box But one of the first guys to his hands on the stuff was the boy king of France; King Francis II. He was a teenager when he tried it and it was said to have cleared his nasal passages which had been severly blocked.  The sad part about king Francis II is that he died at 17. He just fainted one day. After that, his brother took the throne. His brother was 10. Bro was going on in France in the 1500’s?  In their defense their dad, king Henry II, died in an unfortunate jousting accident. He was hit in the eye with the splinter of a wooden joust and that basically lead to sepsis which he died from. Thats some tragic stuff. Tobacco in Colonial America: In 1492, Columbus was warmly greeted by the Native American tribes he encountered when he first set foot on the new continent.  They brought gifts of fruit, food, spears, and more and among those gifts were dried up leaves of the tobacco plant.  As they were not edible and had a distinct smell to them, those leaves, which the Native Americans have been smoking for over 2 millennia for medicinal and religious purposes, were thrown overboard. This is the most Columbus move ever. Dude pulls up on the Bahamas and thinks he’s in India. Names these guys as if he actually is in India and then when they are like here is some tobacco this stuff slaps bro he just tosses it overboard.  Columbus is the most oblivious man in the world. Its even said that he only saw the potential in tobacco when he saw that the natives coveted it in trade deals.