Page 20 - Exotic | November 2024

Tobacco. We know it, and we love it, for the most part. There, of course, are people diametrically opposed to its existence as a consumer product, citing its ill effects on humans, such as contributing to cancer and heart disease, but our society owes a lot to this simple plant. Archaeologists have fou- nad some historical evidence that people in Mesoamerica—before it was called that— had been consuming tobacco for some twelve thousand fucking years before Euro- peans came over, who also thought it was pretty neat and wanted more.
entire fucking country for a considerable amount of time, except the Oregon territo- ries and some of the Midwest, because as historians have observed, both settlers and natives here were like, "Wait, what the fuck is going on over there?"
When it began, indigenous people used tobacco for spiritual reasons, as well as just hittin' the pipe when waking up after a long night, and many native cultures still do use it ceremonially to this day, which is pretty cool. It’s cool because that means they don't gotta pay tax on it, as it relates to religion, and also because if anyone has a reason to say "fuck the government," well, it's them.
The establishment of the cigarette, as we know it today, originated in the late 1800s, when a man named James Bonsack invented a machine that expedited the production of rolled tobacco in paper tubes by an order of magnitude. Their popularity surged, but the pre-rolled smokes cost more than loose to- bacco and papers, so most people still just hand-rolled or smoked pipes. The filtered cigarette was introduced in the early 20th century but did not catch on readily because smokers were like, "What? Why?" and tended to eschew them. Filters had been around for some time, but usually, as gimmicky things to roll up in your paper to keep crap out of your mouth. In 1935, the British (who were serious as hell about smoking back then) had a startup business named Morris Machine Company, which developed a production machine that stuck filter tips into cigs at little additional cost.
Naturally, while tobacco was cultivated in many places around the globe (once peo- ple found out about the shit), the American South was a really robust climate for farming it. The Europeans tried pretty hard to get a solid grow going, but it never worked all that well. The Turks had a very good climate for it as well, and Turkish tobacco is still well-re- garded to this day, but they could not deliver the volume that the expanse of Southern land in the USA could do once it started be- ing a serious cash crop.
As it went, small farms became large planta- tions in no time. Slaves were imported as a labor force, which we all know, but people thought better of that bullshit after some technical innovations in agriculture and a very significant squabble called the god- damn Civil War...which upset basically the
In post-Columbian America, once Europeans got a taste, they were the primary purchas- ers of tobacco exports. The notion of a sailor with a pipe originated then, as those who worked sailing ships were often given a ra- tion of dried tobacco. In fact, tobacco was even thought to have curative properties so as to treat illness, and doctors would keep some on hand. However, you might not like how it was administered, as tobacco smoke was given for medical purposes in the form of an enema. This is, incidentally, the origin of the phrase "blowing smoke up your ass."
During World War II, the most recent world war at the time, troops got their various ra- tions, on all sides, with a small pack of ciga- rettes to go with their food, usually 4 to 6, depending. The Germans got 6. The Italians, Americans, and Brits got 4, but that's per ration, so everyone had plenty of smokes. Sometimes, rations intended for a field kitchen would have a whole tin of them for everyone. The legendary story goes that the Americans, who got Lucky Strikes in their ra- tions, smoked them backward because if the enemy saw Lucky logos on discarded ciga- rette butts, they'd know the Americans were near. They tracked the Germans in a similar
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