Tobacco (pronounced tuh-bak-oh)
(1) Any of several plants belonging to the genus
Nicotiana (of the nightshade family), especially one of those species, as N.
tabacum, whose leaves are prepared for smoking or chewing or as snuff.
(2) Any of numerous solanaceous plants of the genus
Nicotiana, having mildly narcotic properties, tapering hairy leaves, and
tubular or funnel-shaped fragrant flowers. The species N. tabacum is cultivated
as the chief source of commercial tobacco
(3) Any of various similar plants of other genera.
(4) The leaves of certain of these plants, dried and
prepared, as used in cigarettes, cigars & pipes, as snuff and for chewing.
(5) Any product or products made from such leaves.
(6) To indulge in tobacco; to smoke.
(7) To treat with tobacco.
(8) A range of colors in the brown spectrum, tending to
the darker.
1525–1535 (attested since 1588): From the Spanish tabaco of uncertain origin. It was either from the Arabic طُبَّاق (ṭubbāq) (Dittrichia
viscosa) or from one or more Caribbean languages (including Galibi Carib,
Arawak or Taíno) from a word meaning “roll of tobacco leaves” or “pipe for
smoking tobacco” (there are contemporary reports citing both and scholars tend
now to prefer the former), the best known of which was tabago (tube for
inhaling smoke or powdered intoxicating plants). Taino is thought by linguistic
anthropologists to be the most likely source.
That the name of the inhaling implement was applied to the leaves was
explained by the Spanish assuming it was the name of the plant. The West Indian (Caribbean) island of Tobago
was said to have been named in 1498 by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) after
the tambaku (pipe), a reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco
leaves. Derived forms include smokeless
tobacco, tobaccoless & anti-tobacco and there are a wealth of slang terms
for tobacco and its products (including the tax-evading illicit varieties) including
occabot (the backward spelling), baccy, backy, chop chop, durrie, smoke, fag, gasper,
ciggy, coffin nail, cancer stick, darb, dart, death stick, bine &
stogie. The spelling tabacco is obsolete. Tobacco is a noun & verb, tobaccoing
& tobaccoed are verbs; the noun plural is tobaccos or tobaccoes.
One
difficulty public health authorities had in trying to reduce the use of tobacco
was that images of smoking undeniably could be sexy: Lindsay Lohan
demonstrates.
One attempt
at social engineering began in earnest in the 1980s: Pressure was applied on
film & television studios, advertisers and publishers to stop depicting
smoking as something “attractive, sexy and cool” but because the creative
community had over decades honed techniques to make even the lighting of a
cigarette exactly that, success was limited.
What forever changed the environment in the US was when, in 1998, 52
state and territory attorneys general signed the Master Settlement Agreement
(MSA) with the nation’s four largest tobacco companies to settle what were by
then dozens of lawsuits brought to recover billions of dollars in health care
costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses and eventually some
four-dozen tobacco companies settled under the MSA. Although Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and
Texas are not signatories to the MSA, they all have individual settlements
pre-dating the MSA. What the framers of
the MSA worked out was it was better to be realists and, in a sense. “write-off”
those adults already addicted and focus on youth by (1) reducing the take-up
rate (ie “the first cigarette) and (2) induce them to quit (ie “the next
cigarette”). The most obvious tactic in
this was the traditional brute-force approach of increasing the cost of
cigarettes by imposing payment obligations on the tobacco companies party to
the MSA but more subtle measures also restricted tobacco advertising, marketing,
and promotions, including:
(1) Prohibiting
tobacco companies from taking any action to target youth in the advertising,
promotion or marketing of tobacco products.
(2) Banning
the use of cartoons in advertising, promotions, packaging, or labeling of
tobacco products.
(3) Prohibiting
tobacco companies from distributing merchandise bearing the brand name of
tobacco products.
(4) Banning
payments to promote tobacco products in media, such as movies, televisions
shows, theatre, music and video games.
(5) Prohibiting
tobacco brand name sponsorship of events with a significant youth audience (or
team sports).
(6) Eliminating
tobacco company practices which obscure the health risks associated with the
use of tobacco (the history of which is extraordinary).
(7) Providing
funds for the settling states that states may choose to use to fund smoking
prevention programs.
(8) Establishing
and funding the Truth Initiative, an organization “dedicated to achieving a
culture where all youth and young adults reject tobacco.”
The
National Association of Attorneys-General (NAAG) also established a Centre for
Tobacco and Public Health (CTPH) which works with the settling states of the
MSA to preserve and enforce the MSA’s monetary and public-health mandates,
including:
(1) Representing,
advising, and supporting the settling states in MSA-related legal matters,
including litigation and arbitrations.
(2) Representing
the settling states in bankruptcy cases filed by tobacco manufacturers.
(3) Representing
the settling states before the MSA’s independent auditor and escrow agent to
ensure that annual MSA payments are properly calculated and disbursed to the states.
(4) Monitoring
tobacco companies’ compliance with the MSA’s payment and public health
provisions.
(5) Communicating
as the settling states’ collective counsel to tobacco companies, federal
tobacco regulators and other third parties about the MSA and other tobacco
regulatory matters.
A
quarter-century on, the operation of the MSA continues to have a profound
effect on smoking, particularly among youth.
Between 1998-2019, US cigarette consumption dropped by more than 50% and
during that time, regular smoking by high school students dropped from its near
peak of 36.4% in 1997 to a low 6.0% in 2019. Under the terms of the MSA, tobacco
manufacturers are obligated to make, in perpetuity, annual payments to the settling
states as long as cigarettes are sold in the US by companies which have settled
with the States. The earlier social
engineering initiatives were also rolled into the MSA and as well as the
nudging of Hollywood, the programmes were cognizant of the changing media
ecosystem and as well as movie studios, independent production houses, streaming
services and social media platforms were prevailed upon to curb the frequency
with which tobacco imagery appeared.
Billboard
“welcoming” visitors to Zion, Illinois, 1919.
Eighty years before the attorneys-general secured the MSA, at least one
local government knew smoking was dangerous.
Zion is a township in Lake County, Illinois and it's population in 1919
was declared to be 5460. Named after Jerusalem's Mount Zion the
settlement was founded in 1901 by a faith healer who ran Zion as a personal fiefdom
though it later fell into the hands of a proponent of “flat earth theory” who
maintained control until forced out when the extent of his corrupt activities
became known.
Because
cigarette smoke is known to be carcinogenic and sustained use typically reduced
the human lifespan by about a decade it was an admirable part of the public
health programme and with big data sets assembled things became more exact. In December 2024, after running the numbers, a
team at University College London released a report which concluded (on average)
a single cigarette robs some 20 minutes from a person’s life; that means each pack can shorten life expectancy by about seven hours. Historically, the term “pack-a-day-smoker”
was based on the pack of 20 but those who buy the bigger packs can do their own
math. In theory, the report added,
should a smoker quit on 1 January, they would by 8 January have extended their
life-span by a day and if they avoid tobacco until 31 December, they’d have gained
50 days. Explaining the findings, the
team noted smoking usually “doesn’t cut short the unhealthy period at the end of life”
but “primarily
eats into the relatively healthy years in midlife, bringing forward the onset
of ill-health. This means a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health
profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.”
GIF of a
supine Lindsay Lohan, smoking in
The Canyons (2013).
The unusual construct of the noun tobacconist (one who
deals in tobacco) was tobacco + -n- + -ist.
The abnormal inserted consonant appeared to reflect the way the word
actually was pronounced. The sense of
the commercial trader in the product dates from the 1650s although the earlier
meaning, dating from the 1590s was “someone addicted to tobacco and by 1873 the
word nicotinism (morbid effects of
excessive use of tobacco) had been coined so the awareness of the adverse
effects of tobacco are not new. The first
“tobacconist” (a shop where tobacco and related products are purchased) seems
to have operated in Florida in the early 1800s.
The -ist suffix was from
the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής
(-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs)
(the agent-noun suffix). It was added to
nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies
or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind,
(3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from
a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular
theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain
ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a
person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most
offensive).
Art deco: Snuffbox (left) and cigarette case (right).
Snuff (powdered tobacco to be inhaled) was first
available in the1680s and was from the Dutch or Flemish snuf, a shortening of snuftabak
(snuff tobacco), from snuffen (to
sniff, snuff). The practice of taking (sniffing)
snuff quickly became fashionable in England and generated an industry in the making
of “snuff boxes”; many small and exquisite, they’ve long been collectable. The slang phrase “up to snuff” (knowing,
sharp, wide-awake, not likely to be deceived) dates from 1811, the order of the
words thought a reference to the upper-class association with the substance while
the meaning is presumed to allude to the "elevating" properties of
snuff. The noun nicotine (which still appears
occasionally in scientific papers as nicotin) describes the poisonous ,volatile
alkaloid base found in tobacco leaves and was first documented in English in 1819,
from the French nicotine, from the earlier
nicotiane, from the Modern Latin Nicotiana, the formal botanical name for
the tobacco plant, named for Jean Nicot (circa 1530-1600), the French
ambassador to Portugal who in 1561 sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves from his
embassy in Lisbon to Paris.
Until the mid-twentieth century, there was much variation in packaging but in the post-war years things were (more or less) standardized in terms of size and shape. It was a relatively small area with with to work and the convention which developed was to use the simple corporate symbol and product name, thus Marlboro's famous red-on-white chevron. As the product range proliferated (women were a target market thought to have great potential), Philip Morris adopted the technique of semiotics to differentiate while retaining the same identifiable shape, the basic difference being in the color: red for the standard cigarette, blue for mild, green for menthol, gold for longer (ie 4 inch or 100 mm sticks) and black for higher-priced special offerings. That didn't last and while some manufacturers stuck to the red (strong) / blue (mild) / green (menthol) convention, Marlboro's pack colors seemed increasingly to become random.
James VI and I (1566–1625) King of Scotland as James VI
(1567-1625) & King of England and Ireland as James I (1603-1625) wasappalled by tobacco and in 1604 wrote the treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco in which he left none in any doubt about
how he felt and it’s a document which sounds very contemporary in its
condemnation even if some of what was then medical orthodoxy is dated. The king blamed the scourge of tobacco on Native
Americans (although it was European adventurers which brought it from the New
World) and was especially scathing about what is now called passive smoking,
responding by imposing heavy taxes but such were the adverse consequences for
the American colonies that in 1624 a royal charter was instead granted and the whole
crop became a royal monopoly: it was the "if you can't beat them, join them" model to which which governments become attracted if there's money in it. Written
originally in Early Modern English (here transliterated) the king's words still read well:
Have you not reason to be
ashamed, and to forsake this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly
received and so grossly mistaken as something good to use? In your abuse you are sinning against God,
harming both your health and your wallet, making yourselves look absurd by this
custom, scorned and contemned by the civilized people of any nation. It is a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful
to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black
stinking fumes are like the horrible Stygian smoke of the bottomless pit of
Hell.
The king’s mention of Stigian is a reference to the
goddess Styx (Στύξ) (stýks (literally “Shuddering”)) who in Greek mythology took
the form of a river of Elia, Arcadia which surrounded Hades nine times and
flowed from a rock into silver-pillared caves.
What the king probably had in mind was the tale that Stygian waters
imposed senselessness for a year and a draft of the waters was decreed by Zeus
for gods who had perjured themselves. More
positively though it was said of Zeus he also insisted the oaths of the gods be
sworn by the water of the Styx.
Mid-century cigarette advertising. Even in the 1950s the public's suspicion that tobacco was a dangerous product was rising and the industry's advertising switched from the traditional "lifestyle" model to one which relied on endorsements by celebrities and scientists; there was much quoting of research and statistics, much of which would later be wholly debunked. The tactics and techniques were similar to those later adopted by the fossil fuel lobby in their long campaign to discredit the science of human-activity induced climate change.
Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), smoking.
Although
there were always the fastidious types like James I who found it abhorrent, it
wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that in the West governments began
to crack down on the industry to the point where in many jurisdictions the
stated aim is to eliminate it completely, the most recent innovation being
progressively to raise the minimum age at which tobacco products can be
purchased which, in theory, means that within decades, nobody will be able to
buy them.
The Australian government took the conventional approach of taxing cigarettes to the point where the cost of consumption became prohibitive for all but the rich (who now tend not to smoke). That method works well in economics textbooks and elegant models can even predict the point on the elasticity of demand curve at which the punitive taxation becomes effective but the IRL (in real life, a inconvenience which often annoys economists) what happened was organized crime began smuggling cigarettes from overseas where they remained cheap, selling them as "under-the-counter" merchandize in 7-11s and similar outlets, demand guaranteed because they cost Aus$20 rather than the Aus$60 of the lawful (and taxed) product. As well as being addicted, smokers tend to be poorer than average so were pragmatic; while smoking may not be rational behavior, paying Aus$20 for a pack rather than Aus$60 certainly was and this had the unintended consequence of a rapid decline in government revenue. Although the intention was to remove this form of revenue by reducing tobacco consumption to zero, what instead happened was much of the forgone money ended up instead with those in the criminal supply chain, organized crime (the importers) the greatest beneficiaries. That was bad enough but organized crime is not monolithic and the gangs took up battle against each-other, the preferred method to gain control of regional distribution being to fire-bomb the shops obtaining their contraband from the opposition; fire spreading to surrounding shops (florists, hardware stores and such) was collateral damage. Presumably, with alcohol prohibition in the US (1920-1933) being a well-documented case-study, the implications of the putative approach mush have been considered but governments seem to have though it "worth the risk". Having effected their policy, the
heath advocates might have hoped to see light at the end of the tunnel,
only for vaping to become a thing.
Governments
were always interested in tobacco as a form of revenue and taxing an
addictive, lawful product provided for centuries a constant and often gradually
increasing source of income and cynics like to note the attitudes seemed only
to shift when advances in surgical techniques and drug treatments meant those
suffering the consequences of a lifetime of tobacco use began to be kept alive
for decades, often at public expense.
Previously, the afflicted had had the decency quickly to drop dead,
usually at an age when their usefulness as economic units had either vanished
or significantly diminished to the point where, as pensioners, they were a cost
to society. The BBC’s comedy Yes, Prime Minister explored the math
& morals in a discussion between the prime-minister and the permanent head
of the cabinet office.
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: Notwithstanding the fact
that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of
a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of
infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and
corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your
former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably
invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations
of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.
Prime-minister:
Perhaps I might have a précis of that? It says here, smoking related diseases cost
the National Health Service £165 million a year.
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: Yes but we've been in
to that, it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a
ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security
than it did in medical treatment. So,
financially speaking it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at
their present rate.
Prime-minister:
We're talking of 100,000 deaths a year.
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: Yes, but cigarette
taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health Service. We're saving many more lives than we otherwise
could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their
friends. Smokers are national benefactors.
Prime-minister:
So long as they live.
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: A lot of people,
eminent people, influential people have argued that such legislation would be a
blow against freedom of choice.
Prime-minister:
Rubbish. I'm not banning smoking itself.
Does every tax rise represent a blow against freedom?
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: Well, depends how big
the tax rise is.
Prime-minister:
Oh, that's fascinating. Does 20p
represent a blow against freedom? 25p? 30p?
31? Is something a blow against freedom simply because it can seriously damage
your wealth?
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: I foresee all sorts of unforeseen
problems.
Prime-minister:
Such as?
Sir
Humphrey Appleby: If I could foresee
them, they wouldn't be unforeseen.
The Kennedy connection
The 1941
film Tobacco Road was based on the
1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987). It involved a family living in poverty in the
rural backwoods of the US and their antics did not suggest the possession even
of average intelligence. The term “tobacco
road” came to be used as a slur against such folk and their lifestyle and while
it’s usually an amusing disparagement exchanged between the rich and
well-connected, even among them context can matter as Thomas Maier (b 1956) illustrated
in one episode recounted in When Lions
Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (2014) involving John Kennedy (JFK,
1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and Pamela Harriman (1920–1997), later one
of Western society’s last great courtesans but then just divorced from what had
been a brief and understandably unhappy marriage to the even then dissolute Randolph
Churchill (1911-1968), son of Winston (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945
& 1951-1955). Crooked old Joseph
Kennedy (1888–1969) fashioned his sons to become politically powerful establishment
figures but didn’t forget his great-grandfather had in 1848 left the poverty of
rural Ireland during the potato famine to begin to build wealth and influence
in Boston. He’s made sure his sons knew
the family history and when in Ireland in 1945, JFK’s curiosity had prompted a
trip to the old Kennedy homestead:
At the Kennedy farm in
County Wexford, accompanied by Pamela, Jack discovered not much had changed
since his great-grandfather left. “I’m John Kennedy from Massachusetts,” he
said after his knock on the door was answered. “I believe we are related.” His
distant cousin Mary Kennedy Ryan seemed dubious at first but eventually invited
the two strangers in for tea.
The Kennedys who
remained in Ireland had spent much of the past century trying to regain the
land rights to their tenant farms from the British and supporting Ireland’s
independence movement led by such politicians as de Valera. Mary Ryan herself
had been a member of the old IRA’s women’s auxiliary during the 1920s conflict
against the British, carrying guns and money, either in carts or under her
dress, to a secret hiding spot near their farm. “Jack kept pressing on about
his ancestors going to America and so on, trying to make the link,” recalled
Pamela. As a treat, Jack took the Irish Kennedy cousins for a short ride in
Kick’s shining new station wagon, accompanied by the former Mrs. Randolph
Churchill. “They never could figure out who I was,” recalled Pamela. “‘Wife?’
they’d ask. I’d say no. And they’d say, ‘Ah, soon to be, no doubt!’”
After nearly two hours
“surrounded by chickens and pigs,” Jack recalled, he “left in a flow of
nostalgia and sentiment.” The trip reaffirmed the Irish stories he’d heard from
his parents and grandparents. Neither Pamela nor Kick, however, seemed impressed.
As their car pulled away from the Kennedy farm, Pamela turned to Jack with a
remark meant as witty. “That was just like Tobacco Road!” she tittered,
referring to the popular novel about rural life in Georgia. Jack wasn’t amused.
“The English lady,” he later recounted, ” …had not understood at all the magic
of the afternoon.” To Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell, his Irish-Catholic
political aides from Boston, he was much blunter: “I felt like kicking her out
of the car.” At Lismore, Lady Hartington was even haughtier. After listening to
her brother’s wondrous account of the Kennedy homestead, Kick mustered only a
bemused question. “Well, did they have a bathroom?”
