What is tobacco?

Used by 1.2 billion people (one third of the world's population), tobacco is the most frequently-used drug in the world. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it's currently the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, with 5.4 million deaths a year. Tobacco is usually smoked, but it can also be chewed, used as snuff, as a paste, or a powder placed on the gums.

How is tobacco made?

Tobacco comes from the Nicotiana family of plants, which is native to the US, Mexico and parts of South America. Seeds are sown every year and after the plants reach a certain height, the leaves are harvested before being cured for oxidation (which gives tobacco its 'smoothness'). Tobacco can be cured either by exposing it to air (cigars), fire (pipe tobacco), the sun (oriental tobacco) or flue-cured (cigarettes).

Tobacco was used in shamanistic rituals

After curing, tobacco is combined with additives, such as glycerol, as well as flavouring products, like cocoa and liquorice. Finally, the tobacco mixture is filled into cigarette or cigar tubes and packaged.

What chemicals are in tobacco?

The addictive chemical in tobacco is nicotine. It takes around seven seconds for nicotine to reach your brain after taking a puff on a cigarette, releasing the 'happy hormone' dopamine. This makes smokers feel relaxed, giving them the 'hit' that maintains their habit. According to some studies, nicotine is more addictive than cannabis, cocaine and heroin.

The carcinogenic (cancer-causing) part of tobacco comes from the tar and smoke itself. Tobacco smoke contains 19 known carcinogens, including carbon monoxide (the same stuff pumped out of car exhaust pipes). It also includes chemicals such as formaldehyde, ammonia, polonium and arsenic. 

What's the history of tobacco? 

Smoking tobacco dates back to 5000 BC when it was used in shamanistic rituals in South America. Tobacco was soon cultivated as an agricultural product all over the Western hemisphere, and was smoked chiefly in pipes.

Europe had to wait until 1560, when a Frenchman called Jean Nicot (from whose name 'nicotine' is derived) introduced tobacco to France. It spread to Britain soon afterwards, and by the early 1600s, 'drinking smoke' (as it was then called) was believed to cure ailments such as toothache, halitosis and worms. Bizarrely, tobacco was also used as an enema (injected into the anus) to resuscitate victims of drowning.

Tobacco was first regarded as a health risk by King James I in 1604, who claimed it was hateful to the nose in his A Counterblaste to Tobacco treatise. He subsequently imposed a whopping 4000% tax on its importation. Meanwhile, some countries believed smoking was indecent and blasphemous - in Russia, for example, tobacco smokers were punished by having their nostrils slit.

In the 18^th Century, snuff replaced pipe smoking as the main way tobacco was consumed. Cigarettes didn't arrive in Britain until the Victorian era, when troops returning from the Crimean War (1853-1856) brought them home after seeing foreign soldiers puffing away on them.  

When did people finally realise tobacco was unhealthy?

Before World War I, lung cancer was a relatively uncommon disease. However, by the 1920s, it reached epidemic-status, which led German scientists to establish a link between the condition and the rise in cigarette smoking. The medical community didn't take note until 1950, when a British Medical Journal study formally identified that smoking was a key cause of lung cancer.

Since then, health warnings, increased tax, controls on advertising and bans on smoking in public spaces have all contributed to a significant tumble in tobacco consumption across the developed world (in Britain the percentage of smokers has fallen from 39 to 21% since 1979).

Despite this, the world's poorest people are smoking more. According to WHO, one billion of the world's smokers live in developing economies. In Indonesia, the most impoverished families spend a whopping 15% of their total expenditure on tobacco.

Even though the 2007 ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces has resulted in 400,000 British people giving up tobacco within one year, it is still the biggest cause of death and illness in the UK, with 120,000 people dieing each year from smoking-related diseases.

How does tobacco reach the UK?

Although most tobacco reaches Britain through legitimate means (mainly from the US), tobacco smuggling is still a big business, costing the UK around £1.7b a year. Almost one in seven cigarettes smoked in this country is smuggled. The illegal cigarettes are often sold at knock-off prices (for less than £3) at car boot sales and outside schools, but their ingredients have been found to include rat poison, plus high levels of mercury.  

Updated: 13/04/2010

Written by Christian Koch