History of tobacco use

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Pipe smoking as “maintaining tradition” - here in 2009 at the 465th Bremer Schaffermahlzeit , which has been taking place every year since 1545

This article summarizes the history of tobacco use in its various forms (i.e. all tobacco products ). The best-known type is smoking tobacco , for example in the form of cigarettes or cigars , and tobacco products can also be chewed ( chewing tobacco ) or snorted ( snuff ). Today the use of an extract as an enema ( enema ) is mainly of historical importance .

History of tobacco use and its spread

Origin in America

The tobacco plant originally comes from America . Cultivation and consumption were already known in South and North America long before the European conquerors set foot on the continent. The tobacco leaves were chewed in conjunction with lime (north coast of South America), a powder with 50% tobacco content was sniffed ( Caribbean islands) and the tobacco leaves were boiled to a liquid ( Guyana region ). The original form of the cigar already existed. Small rolled up tobacco leaves wrapped in large (Brazil, Central America , Caribbean islands) or crushed tobacco in reeds ( Mexico ) were smoked . Pipes made of clay, wood, stone, tortoise shell, or silver were used in North America.

Smoking itself probably developed from the smoking ceremony of priests and medicine men (cf. smoke offering ). Tobacco juice was served in initiation customs, and tobacco leaves were used medicinally to treat skin injuries.

Europeans got to know tobacco when they first met the people of America. When Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 , the islanders brought him presents, including tobacco leaves. Columbus was only able to start something with this gift when two of his men ( Luis de Torres and Rodrigo de Xeres ) saw how locals on the island of Cuba put the leaves in their mouths, set them on fire and then "drank" the smoke. 1499 learned the Spanish conquerors of Venezuela know the tobacco-chewing coast, in 1500 the Portuguese navigator met Pedro Alvares Cabral the pipe smoking . In 1518, the Spanish found a very developed smoking culture in Mexico.

The French explorer Jacques Cartier reported in 1536 about the smoking habits of the Indians of Canada and the associated utensil, which he called "pipe". The word tobacco probably comes from the Antilles , where the smoke pipe was called "tobago".

The sailors, commuters between the old and the new world, took a liking to tobacco and brought it to the southern and western European ports, from where traders spread it all over the world. The custom of smoking was quickly adopted. Tobacco quickly became an expensive and important commodity, to which its presumed medicinal properties also contributed.

Attempts to ban in the 16th and 17th centuries

Even then there were opponents of tobacco smoking; among other things, they denounced its abuse as a recreational drug. In 1575 a first ban against smoking was imposed for the churches in Mexico , since the "pagan custom" of smoking was seen as a desecration of the churches. Later control attempts were often made on the basis of economic and political ideas.

Young man with a pipe (Michel Gobin, 17th century)

The spread of tobacco on the one hand and these attempts at control on the other led to a crisis in Europe and in some Asian countries in the 17th century. For example, London had become a leading tobacco trading center and pipe smoking had quickly become a widespread custom in Great Britain. Tobacco was an expensive commodity, worth ten times the price of pepper at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries . James I , King of England at that time, published his pamphlet “The Smokers or a Royal Joke about Tobacco” in 1603 , a pamphlet against tobacco. The king expressed his disgust for tobacco and his contempt for the "dissolute and dissolute" smokers and questioned its medicinal properties.

The smoker (Adriaen van Ostade, 17th century)

The first attempt to ban tobacco was then in the form of an increased import duty of 4000%. The effect was that the number of legal imports decreased and with them the royal revenues. Instead, smuggling grew , the goods were stretched, and consumption continued to rise. In 1608 the tariffs were lowered again and the tax on tobacco became an important royal source of income. The Fund of the bog body of Dannike woman but from the 17th century shows that even socially disadvantaged people tobacco smoking.

In Germany , the new smoking habit was initially viewed with astonishment, but then quickly expanded. The soldiers of the Thirty Years' War made them known to the entire population, young and old, men and women. Around the middle of the 17th century, tobacco sales were banned in Kursachsen , Bavaria , the Habsburg hereditary lands in Austria and many small principalities. It was only allowed to dispense it in pharmacies if the tobacco was sold as medicine. Any disregard of these control attempts was punished with a fine (in Cologne for example 50 gold guilders), arrest and forced labor . However, these control experiments were of little use, they were never seriously considered because the number of users was too large.

In Russia , China , Japan and Turkey , tobacco and its proliferation were dealt with by tougher means. In these regions, tobacco was associated with the influence of the European colonial powers, which had to be pushed back. After Sultan Osman II already banned tobacco consumption by decree, his successor Murad IV took more drastic measures, had all tobacco houses demolished in 1633 and threatened smokers with the death penalty ; This was by no means based on religious motives, especially since it is difficult to derive a tobacco ban from the Koran . In Russia, in the first half of the 17th century, tobacco consumption was viewed by the clergy as a mortal sin and punished with ripping open the nose and cutting open the lip.

The Appalto system

The rulers and traders recognized that the tobacco trade could generate enormous amounts of money for the state budget and profits. The initial bans were soon replaced by a targeted tax policy. Many adopted the “ Appalto system”, which had been developed in Mantua in 1627 and in Venice in 1659 : buying and selling as well as tax collection were carried out by private tenants. They had to pay fixed sums for this and in turn tried to get as much money as possible from the buyer. As a result, the tobacco price rose immensely. To suppress smuggling, the tenants had informants authorized to issue fines. Because of their unscrupulousness, the tobacco farmers and their informers were not popular with the people. In France, for example, the tenants' agents arrested around 2500 men, 2000 women and 6000 children, whose judges were paid by the tenants.

But no punishment, no matter how cruel, could stop the illegal tobacco trade. There were smuggling gangs everywhere, some with several hundred armed riders; the leaders even became folk heroes. The rulers were blamed for the immense tobacco prices and the unscrupulous behavior of the tenants, which was one of the reasons for revolutionary unrest. In the course of the French Revolution , the last tobacco tenants were guillotined in 1794 . After a while, the Appalto system was replaced by state government or a consumption tax. This system has survived in its main features to this day.

18th and 19th centuries: Forms of tobacco consumption and their social significance

In the 18th and 19th centuries, tobacco was of particular importance in Europe and America as a recreational drug and as a source of tax revenue. Consumption rose steadily; it was in demand in everyday life, but also as an art object. For example, tobacco fields and tobacco plants were found again as stamp motifs, and tobacco adorned the capitals of the columns of the Capitol as an ornamental plant in Washington in 1818 .

Interior with figures (Marcellus Laroon the Younger, early 18th century)
Hill leader with children (Indian book illumination, around 1760)

The most common form of smoking at the time was the tobacco pipe . Wooden and earthen pipes were made in Africa, water pipes in Persia and India , clay models, meerschaum and amber pipes, painted porcelain head pipes and heather root pipes in Europe and the Ottoman Empire . Often the political point of view also flowed into the design of the pipes.

The tobacco college of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I became famous, which was abolished by his son Friedrich II because he hated smoking. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lamented how much money went up in smoke and wrote: "Smoking makes you stupid; it makes you incapable of thinking and writing. "

Despite the widespread use of pipe smoking, snuff and cigars were also very popular at that time . The 18th century in particular is considered to be the period of snuff. This came from America to Portugal , Spain and Italy . In these countries the priests were among the strongest sniffers. The constant sneezing during masses led the church to ban snuffing tobacco. However, this was unsuccessful, so that in 1725 snuffing and smoking tobacco was again allowed by the church. The tobacco was initially bought specially as a cone-shaped mold and then grated on a grater. Later on there was the job of rasping, where you bought the finished snuff. Louis XIV had an aversion to smoking, which is why sniffing became common at the royal court instead. In addition, the aristocracy wanted to differentiate itself from the aspiring bourgeoisie through an upscale lifestyle. The cold was developed into a veritable art form that had to be celebrated. With a real nobleman of the Rococo period, the right accessory, the tobacco box , could not be missing, which had to be as precious as possible, made of porcelain or gold and set with precious stones. Tobacco boxes were also given away as diplomatic gifts.

Contemporary critics also emphasized the disadvantages of sniffing tobacco: you get "dripping and smelly noses" and bad breath. Nevertheless, the French sniffing of tobacco was adopted by the rest of Europe, by the nobility and the people, and not only men sniffed tobacco, but women too. At the end of the 18th century, 90% of the tobacco sold in Germany and France was snuff. Over 200 varieties were on the market. The competition was enormous and so the first tobacco advertisement came about . The snuffbox was the function of the Politikums to - there was, for example, for the people of cans with the faces of Voltaire , for the Royalists the portrait of Louis XIV in the first third of the 19th century snuff ebbed tobacco since the. " Ancien Régime “An end was put and thus also the aristocracy with their snuff culture. The rising middle class found an alternative in the cigar .

Je Fume en Pleurant mes Péchés (Napoleon caricature, 1815)

Their starting point was Spain , and by 1720 there were more than 1000 women working in the cigar industry in Seville (see Carmen ). After 1814, French and British soldiers who were on Spanish soil during the Napoleonic Wars spread the cigar in their home countries. In other European countries, too, the production and consumption of cigars increased. In Prussia , the habit of smoking cigars was viewed with suspicion, because before the March Revolution it was considered to be a symbol of “seducers”. In Berlin, for example, smoking cigars was forbidden on the street. Disregard of this law was seen as "rebellion against the ruling state power". After the revolution, the ban was lifted in 1848 as a “concession to the revolutionaries”. In the second half of the 19th century, the cigar became a symbol of the bourgeoisie, and upper class society set up smoking rooms in their homes.

In the wake of the November Revolution of 1918, the Prussian State Railways removed existing smoking bans in the workplace at the beginning of 1919, unless they were required by the fire police.

In the USA at the turn of the century, compared to other nations, a lot of chewing tobacco was consumed. Chewing tobacco was considered male, and the associated spittoon was also a must. In 1947 , 100 million pounds of chewing tobacco were sold. In Europe, only seamen and miners did the same to Americans because of the risk of fire on ships and underground. But then the triumph of the cigarette began .

The cigarette in the 19th and 20th centuries

Toreador (Mary Cassatt, 1873)

In order to utilize waste from cigar production in a profitable way, women workers in the tobacco factories wrapped tobacco scraps in paper. These papelitos were offered for sale in Mexico City from the 18th century and then came to France via Spain at the beginning of the 19th century. This is where the cigarette got its common name today - the French diminutive of cigare (cigar). It was also popular in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, as a milder tobacco than European or American tobacco was grown here, which made the cigarettes taste better.

Man with a pipe (Paul Cézanne, 1890)

During the First Crimean War (1853–1856), the British and French soldiers allied with the Ottomans smoked tobacco in newspaper. The “kosja noschka”, paper that was folded like a pipe and filled with tobacco, and the “zirhaha”, a roll of paper in the shape of a cigar, were both cheaper than the cigar and more fit for war than a fragile pipe. The officers took these preforms of cigarettes and brought them to the London and Paris clubs. Supplier markets emerged in Cairo , Constantinople , Moscow and Saint Petersburg . The first cigarette company in Germany was founded in Dresden in 1862 as a branch of the Petersburg company Laferme with initially just seven employees. In the following decades there were more and more companies in Germany, Greece, Russia and other countries. Production in Germany rose from 60 million in the 1860s to 11.5 billion in 1912. Tobacco and cigarettes were also imported, mostly Russian, Turkish and Egyptian.

The cigarette gained cult status and its utensils, such as elegant cases, became status symbols. One could set oneself apart from the ordinary citizen with the cigarette and demonstrate “cosmopolitan superiority”, cosmopolitanism, elegant art of living, as well as a tendency to wickedness. In contrast to the cigar, which was more for the slow connoisseur, the cigarette was attributed to the fast pace, the sense of time of the time, and thus fit better than the previously popular cigar. The pipe went out of fashion because the stuffing process was tedious. With the introduction of the cigarette there was also a smoking drug that was affordable for the lower classes. Not only was it cheaper, the standard of living had also increased, but stress and performance situations, the desire for stimulation and relaxation had also increased. The cigarette was milder than the other forms of tobacco, and overdoses were less common. Learning to smoke was easier than learning to smoke a pipe and a cigar. During the First World War , the Great Depression and the Second World War , the cigarette suppressed the hunger of the population.

Caricature of a Smoking Emancipated Woman and a Shy Man (1890s)

Women were opened up as a new customer base with the cigarette, as pipes or cigars were viewed as too masculine. The slim cigarette matched the ideal of beauty at the time, and so cigarette smoking was made popular by emancipated women.

With the emergence of cigarette advertising, the industry sought to increase demand and expand the market. In 1910 there were around 20,000 cigarette manufacturers, but then it was the big cigarette brands that drove concentration in the industrial sector.

Facade decoration of a tobacco shop from 1909
Advertisement for Turkish Murad cigarettes (1918)

In the USA, production and consumption grew faster than in Germany. There a new tobacco blend was invented, the " American Blend ", a mixture of Virginia, Burley and Turkish tobacco. Their advantage was that they were milder and cheaper. To do this, this tobacco was dried using a new method, with the help of heat passed through metal tubes. This creates fermentation, the smoke of which gets better into the lungs, and thus the nicotine can get to the brain faster. In 1913 the first " Camel " cigarette came on the market. The brand had a 40% market share by 1918 and remained the favorite of Americans for a long time. In 1939 the “ Pall Mall ” came onto the market and with it the first king-size cigarette, and in 1954 the Winston as the first filter cigarette.

At about the same time as the prohibition against alcohol, laws against tobacco consumption were passed in 14 states of the USA from 1895 to 1921, but they had little success.

In the 1930s, Germany was the world's largest tobacco importer, importing 100,000 t per year (from Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria). 80% of all German men smoked (12.5 cigarettes per day) and twenty percent of all women (7.2 cigarettes per day).

According to the US researcher Robert N. Proctor , smoking bans based on health risks for the first time were enacted in Germany under the National Socialists . They led a widespread campaign against smoking in public buildings, transport and in the workplace . Tobacco advertising and cultivation were also subject to strict requirements. Adolf Hitler described tobacco as the “red man's revenge” ( Indian ) on the “white race” for alcohol. The focus of the propaganda was on the health consequences and the reduction in labor, mixed with racist propaganda against Jews and blacks. The innovations of this era also include the concept of passive smoking and the introduction of non-smoking compartments in trains. However, the Nazis also used cigarettes themselves, for example to finance the SA (cigarette names "Sturm" and "Trommler"), and with the war the smoking bans were again greatly relaxed.

In August 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, tobacco was rationed; smoking cards were now available: for adult men, who were entitled to 40 cigarettes per month, and for women between the ages of 25 and 55, who received 20 cigarettes per month.

In post-war Germany, due to the complete collapse of the economy and monetary transactions, cigarettes became a second currency, and cigarette smuggling flourished. The measures against smoking came to an end for the time being. Many of the studies that are still valid today (for example those of the Scientific Institute for Research into Tobacco Dangers from the National Socialist era) went under, smoking became sexy.

In the 1950s, smoking behind the wheel was considered medically recommended because nicotine keeps you awake and therefore contributes to road safety. The ADAC Motorwelt reported in 1952 from an English study, according to which "drivers under the influence of nicotine are less likely to have alcoholic impairment of their driving performance" than without them. Anyone who smoked drove more safely drunk. The ADAC saw one of its main tasks as "ensuring ongoing cooperation between the tobacco and motor vehicle associations".

The image of the “cool smoker” was to persist into the eighties, with stars and politicians smoking in talk shows and in films. The French films of the late sixties and early seventies, for example, offer vivid examples of almost permanent tobacco consumption on the screen: In Sautet's film The Things in Life, Michel Piccoli only does not smoke in the settings in which he is shown as a dying man.

The picture only changed with the death of many prominent smokers such as Humphrey Bogart (esophageal cancer), Gary Cooper , Steve McQueen or Yul Brynner and the Marlboro cowboy Wayne McLaren from cinema advertising.

Launch of electronic cigarettes in the early 21st century

During the 2010 decade in particular, the electronic cigarette trade became a mass market worldwide , so that in some countries the e-cigarette somewhat reduced the previously classic cigarette consumption.

Situation at the beginning of the 21st century (in Germany)

At the beginning of the third millennium, price and tax increases on tobacco resulted in a decline in tobacco consumers. There was or is a high proportion of academics among the adults who subsequently quit smoking.

The steady price increases in the 2000s and 2010 decades ensured that, despite lower cigarette sales in Germany, the revenues for the tobacco industry remained at the same level.

With the state-sponsored preventive campaign Be Smart, Don't Start , young people should or should be deterred from smoking. In fact, the percentage of children and adolescents who smoked fell to a new record level again and again within two decades.But according to the German Cancer Research Center , this was less due to the campaign than to the high prices that resulted from the price increases in the 2000s. Also apply smartphones as a factor that reduced smoking by distracting.

Additives

Substances are often added to tobacco during processing in order to make the smoke easier to consume and possibly increase the potential for addiction. Ammonium chloride increases the absorption of nicotine many times over, so that despite the machine-measured low nicotine value, a similarly high amount of nicotine reaches the smoker's blood as with stronger cigarettes. In Germany, this addition to cigarette tobacco is banned, state investigation offices regularly check the tobacco products for their chemical composition. The thesis that the addition of ammonium compounds to cigarette tobacco increases the absorption of nicotine from smoke contradicts a study from autumn 2011, which was published by a state research institution in the Netherlands. Accordingly, the ammonium content in cigarette tobacco has no influence on nicotine intake. Sugar is supposed to make the smoke milder so that there is no scratchy feeling when inhaling.

Health Risks of Tobacco Smoking

This is how it works with tobacco and rum: First you are happy, then you fall over. Caricature from Wilhelm Busch's Die Haarbag from 1878

The first reports of negative clinical experiences appeared as early as the beginning of the 20th century, but there were still few medical examinations. It was only when comparisons and long-term studies were carried out between non-smokers and smokers that the harmful effects of tobacco smoking were found. The first major research was carried out in the 1950s; the results were summarized and published by the American Surgeon General's Advisory Committee. Much scientific work falls under the term junk science because it was financed and manipulated by the tobacco industry. In Germany, the activities of the Association of the Cigarette Industry , which from 1977 to 1991 directed research projects, some of politically influential scientists, became known. The Tobacco Institute was active in the USA until 1997 , and its activities are documented in detail.

The most common form of tobacco consumption in western culture is smoking. The health effects of chewing and snuff consumption have not been well researched. It is known, however, that only a small part of the carcinogens extracted from tobacco smoke can already be detected in fresh or unburned dried / fermented tobacco. The majority of these substances arise only through combustion. On the other hand, chewing tobacco users have higher cholesterol levels than smokers, at least as high a statistical risk of circulatory diseases and a far higher risk of developing oral cancer.

The health hazard from smoking:
The components that are hazardous to health

Future of tobacco use

Cigarette tobacco

Growing knowledge of the health risks associated with tobacco consumption has led many states to pay greater attention to the protection of non-smokers and to take measures to reduce tobacco consumption, such as increasing the tobacco tax , health education, a ban on tobacco advertising and unitary packaging . The phenomenon of smoking is perceived more and more critically by society. From 1965 to 2012, the percentage of the US population who smoked fell from 46 to 18 percent.

The interest groups of the tobacco industry are making considerable efforts to put the scientific facts in a different light with their own statements. The efforts of lobbyists even found their cultural expression in several Hollywood films, including a. Insider (1999) and Thank You for Smoking (2005). In Germany, the German Cigarette Association acts as a representative of several large cigarette manufacturers, in particular to abolish the laws protecting non-smokers in the federal states.

literature

  • Egon Caesar Conte Corti : The dry drunkenness. Origin, Struggle and Triumph of Smoking . Insel, Leipzig 1930 (paperback edition: Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-458-32604-9 )
  • Iain Gately: Tobacco. A cultural history of how an exotic plant seduced civilization . Grove Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8021-3960-4
  • Henner Hess : Smoking. History, business, dangers . Stuttgart 1992. ISBN 978-3-593-33807-1 .
  • Annerose Menninger: Enjoyment in the face of cultural change. Tobacco, Coffee, Tea and Chocolate in Europe (16th – 19th Centuries) . Steiner, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-515-09179-4 .
  • Hasso Spode : Cultural History of Tobacco . In: Manfred Singer u. a. (Ed.): Alcohol and Tobacco. Basics and secondary diseases . Thieme, Stuttgart 2010. ISBN 978-3-13-146671-6 . Pp. 13-64.
  • Anja Steinhorst: About smoking while traveling . In: Yearbook for Railway History , vol. 39 (2007/2008), pp. 21–24. ISBN 978-3-937189-29-1 .

Web links

swell

  1. Magnus Ljunge: The Dannike woman, a pipe smoker of the late 17th century . In: Knasterkopf - specialist magazine for clay pipes and historical tobacco consumption . No. 19 , 2007, ISBN 978-3-937517-93-3 , ISSN  0937-0609 , p. 48–49, 172 (translated and edited by Natascha Mehler).
  2. Prussian and Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Prussian and Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz of January 4, 1919, No. 1. Announcement No. 13, p. 5.
  3. ^ Robert N. Proctor: The Nazi was on cancer. Princeton University Press 1999. ISBN 0-691-00196-0 .
  4. ^ "Tobacco and drivers", ADAC Motorwelt, Munich, 5th year, issue 3, March 1952, page 6f
  5. Smoking rate among adults. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
  6. a b c d Dietmar Jazbinsek: Protection of non-smokers: Germany is the last hope of the tobacco industry . In: The time . February 20, 2020, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 8, 2020]).
  7. Smoking rate among children and adolescents. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
  8. https://www.dkfz.de/de/tabakkontrolle/download/Publikationen/AdWfP/AdWfdP_2014_Tabakpraevention-in-Deutschland_barbeiten-2018.pdf
  9. Nicotine addiction and tobacco manipulation The cigarette industry uses various methods to promote tobacco addiction ( Memento of December 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  10. Terrell Stevenson, Robert N. Proctor: The SECRET and SOUL of Marlboro. In: American Journal of Public Health . 98, 2008, pp. 1184-1194, doi : 10.2105 / AJPH.2007.121657 . PMC 2424107 (free full text)
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  12. Article in the journal Food Chemical Toxicology , accessed November 29, 2011
  13. stern.de: Cigarette additives: From vanillin to urea - May 2005
  14. stern.de: Tobacco Industry - The Great Fogging, December 16, 2005
  15. Link to the website www.tobaccoinstitute.com
  16. Tobacco consumption will be eliminated in the next generation , telepolis of January 17, 2014