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This article was originally published in Spud Underground, a free rock n' roll zine. Read the latest issue online
When Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba in 1492, the natives gave him a gift of dried leaves. After sampling the smoke of Nicotiana rustica, he brought it back to Spain. It was an overnight success. Before long, a colony was set up in Cuba to grow tobacco.
More Spanish colonies were established in the Americas. They grew N. rustica to export to other countries, while keeping the smoother and tastier smoke of N. tabacum for themselves. Portuguese and English colonies started popping up overseas to grow their own tobacco, and before long N. tabacum was everywhere.
The first permanent English settlement in America was Jamestown, Virginia. The town was on the verge of starvation until John Rolfe came by with tobacco seeds and transformed the town into a major industrial hub. Tobacco became America’s first export in 1611.
Guess what- John Rolfe married Pocahontas after John Smith returned to England.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, tobacco became a vice for the rich. The kind of pipe you had and the type of tobacco you smoked said a lot about your station in life. Poor Spaniards got the idea of wrapping tobacco scraps in corn husks because they couldn’t afford pipes. Smoking tobacco that way was seen as absolutely disgusting, positively barbaric. England had a great idea to keep their favorite vice out of the hands of the peasantry- raise the taxes!
When tariffs were raised on American tobacco, plantation owners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were totally screwed. London merchants found that their suppliers had no cash and demanded they be paid with extra tobacco instead. The term “cash crop” comes from farmers using their crops as an actual currency that way, and this is one of the many injustices that led to the American Revolution.
America kicked the last of the British out in 1783 and spent about 100 years as a punching bag for the rest of the world. Britain came back for a rematch and trashed the economy, after the civil war we were flat broke and in bad shape. A whole nation of peasants, mixing our coveted tobacco with molasses and chewing on it. An even nastier method than smoking it out of corn husks. When Spanish sailors came by smoking those cigarettes, James Albert Bonsack said “That’s a neat idea!” and invented the cigarette rolling machine in 1880.
Bonsack was 22 years old when he invented to cigarette roller. What were YOU doing at 22?
Richard Joshua ‘R.J.’ Reynolds, the son of a tobacco farmer, moved to North Carolina to make it in the big city. He started a new tobacco company and developed a unique blend using Turkish tobacco and proprietary additives. With Bonsack’s cigarette rolling machine, he mass-produced cigarettes and was the first to sell pre-packaged smokes in 1913. He called them Camels, in honor of the worlds’ most fragrant livestock.
Americans had no class. By which I mean, no aristocracy to look down their nose at cigarette puffing paupers. We saw cigarettes as more convenient than pipes and less messy than dip. It was the perfect match for another Industrial Revolution invention, the 15-minute break. Step out, refresh your brain, and get back to work. No frills, just results. Such is the American way. The rest of the world industrialized, saw the wisdom of the cigarette, and classists judged tobacco no more.
R.J. Reynolds was a major advocate for worker’s rights during the Industrial Revolution. He pioneered shorter work weeks, higher wages, and even stock purchasing plans that allowed lowly factory workers to retire as millionaires. He voted to increase property taxes to pay for public schools, a pretty bold move for a guy who owned 121 buildings. After he died, the company went on without him, the magic of the wonder drug started to fade.
The RJR Tobacco Factory in NC. Taking a drag off of one of those smoke stacks might get you a little nic-sick.
People were taking note of tobacco’s effects on the lungs, the mind, and nuts way back when it was new; as you can see in this 1617 verse by Dr. William Vaughn:
“Tobacco, that outlandish weed
It spends the brain, and spoiles the seede
It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight
It robs a woman of her right. [sic]”
Medical science caught up to these claims in the 1950s. By this time, tobacco companies were humongous enough to sway data, buy out researchers, and lobby politicians. There’s evidence that R.J.R. knew about cigarettes causing cancer as early as 1953. Truth always prevails, and the tobacco industry has diminished greatly since then. Cigarette smoking in down 66% from 50 years ago. Advertising is now illegal. Making cigarette packs too decorative is now illegal. Selling them without a big THIS WILL KILL YOU warning is now illegal.
Remember to always trust our medical professionals. They are never, ever wrong.
Why not just outlaw the damn things entirely if they’re such a health hazard? For the same reason King James decided not to outlaw tobacco in the early 17th century, even though he thought it was a “custome lothesome [sic] to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
There are 1.3 BILLION cigarette smokers in the world, and 80% of them live in low-income places. As long as the poor are addicted to cigarettes, the government can charge them extra for luxury of killing themselves. And they’ll pay it. The ruling class prey upon the poor, just as they have throughout all of human history.
We’ve come full circle. Smoking cigarettes is seen as distasteful and dangerous as it was in Renaissance-era Spain. It is to be looked down upon and shunned with medical data and guilt trips from the high-and-mighty. Today’s aristocracy talk down on tobacco while profiting from its sales. Altria is still a blue-chip stock. But look, the World Health Organization has come to save the day with their MPOWER plan:
- onitor tobacco use and prevention policies
- rotect people from tobacco use
- ffer help to quit tobacco use
- arn about the dangers of tobacco
- nforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
- aise taxes on tobacco.
That’s a cute acronym. All I see are six feel-good promises followed by one actionable measure to line their own pockets. These people make me more sick than heart disease, lung cancer, and emphysema ever could.
