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Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines.^[1] It is most commonly used as a drug, and is a valuable cash crop for countries such as Cuba, China and the United States. Tobacco is a name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the Solanaceae family (nightshade family) and for the product manufactured from the leaf and used in cigars and cigarettes, snuff, and pipe and chewing tobacco. Tobacco plants are also used in plant bioengineering, and some of the 60 species are grown as ornamentals. The chief commercial species, N. tabacum, is believed native to tropical America, like most nicotiana plants, but has been so long cultivated that it is no longer known in the wild. N. rustica, a mild-flavored, fast-burning species, was the tobacco originally raised in Virginia, but it is now grown chiefly in Turkey, India, and Russia. The alkaloid nicotine is the most characteristic constituent of tobacco and is responsible for its addictive nature. The harmful effects of tobacco derive from the thousands of different compounds generated in the smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzpyrene), formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, radioactive polonium-210, tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), phenols, and many others.^[2]

In consumption it most commonly appears in the forms of smoking, chewing, snuffing, or dipping tobacco. Tobacco had long been in use as an entheogen in the Americas, but upon the arrival of Europeans in North America, it quickly became popularized as a trade item and a widely-abused drug. This popularization led to the development of the southern economy of the United States until it gave way to cotton. Following the American Civil War, a change in demand and a change in labor force allowed for the development of the cigarette. This new product quickly led to the growth of tobacco companies.

There are more than 70 species of tobacco in the plant genus Nicotiana. The word nicotiana (as well as nicotine) is in honor of Jean Nicot, French ambassador to Portugal, who in 1559 sent it as a medicine to the court of Catherine de Medici.^[3]

Because of the powerfully addictive properties of nicotine, tolerance and dependence develop. Absorption quantity, frequency, and speed of tobacco consumption are believed to be directly related to biological strength of nicotine dependence, addiction, and tolerance.^[4][5] The usage of tobacco is an activity that is practiced by some 1.1 billion people, and up to 1/3 of the adult population.^[6] The World Health Organization(WHO) reports it to be the leading preventable cause of death worldwide and estimates that it currently causes 5.4 million deaths per year.^[7] Rates of smoking have leveled off or declined in developed countries, but continue to rise in developing countries.

Tobacco is cultivated similarly to other agricultural products. Seeds are sown in cold frames or hotbeds to prevent attacks from insects, and then transplanted into the fields. Tobacco is an annual crop, which is usually harvested mechanically or by hand. After harvest, tobacco is stored for curing, which allows for the slow oxidation and degradation of carotenoids. This allows for the agricultural product to take on properties that are usually attributed to the "smoothness" of the smoke. Following this, tobacco is packed into its various forms of consumption, which include smoking, chewing, snuffing, and so on. Most cigarettes incorporate flue-cured tobacco, which produces a milder, more inhalable smoke. Use of low pH, inhalable, flue cured tobacco is one of the principal reasons smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases association with smoke inhalation.^[8]

Tobacco can also be pressed into plugs and sliced into flakes.

A historic kiln in Myrtleford, Victoria, Australia.

Basma tobacco leaves drying in the sun at Pomak village in Xanthi, Greece.

Etymology[link]

The Spanish and Portuguese word tabaco is thought to have originated in Taino, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. In Taino, it was said to refer either to a roll of tobacco leaves (according to Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552), or to the tabago, a kind of Y-shaped pipe for sniffing tobacco smoke (according to Oviedo; with the leaves themselves being referred to as cohiba).^[9]

However, similar words in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian were commonly used from 1410 to define medicinal herbs, originating from the Arabic طبق tabbaq, a word reportedly dating to the 9th century, as the name of various herbs.^[10]

History[link]

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Early developments[link]

The earliest depiction of a European man smoking, from Tabacco by Anthony Chute.

Tobacco had already long been used in the Americas when European settlers arrived and introduced the practice to Europe, where it became popular. Many Native American tribes traditionally used tobacco. Eastern North American tribes carried large amounts of tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item, and often smoked it in peace pipes, either in defined sacred ceremonies, or to seal a bargain,^[11] and they smoked it at such occasions in all stages of life, even in childhood.^[12] It was believed that tobacco is a gift from the Creator, and that the exhaled tobacco smoke carries one's thoughts and prayers to heaven.^[13]

Before the development of lighter Virginia and White Burley strains of tobacco, the smoke was too harsh to be inhaled traditionally by Native Americans in ceremonial use or by Europeans who used it in the form of pipes and cigars.^[14] Inhaling "rough" tobacco without seriously damaging the lungs in the short term required smoking only small quantities at a time using a pipe like the midwakh or kiseru or smoking newly invented waterpipes such as the bong or the hookah (See Thuoc lao for a modern continuance of this practice). Inhaling smoke was already common in the East with the introduction of cannabis and opium millennia before.

Popularization[link]