OK, I know that cigarettes are popular in many parts of the world, but I’m fairly certain tobacco is an exclusively North American plant.
So here’s what I’ve been wondering about: Are there particular brands of, say, British cigarettes? Do they import tobacco and just make the cigarettes there, or do they actually grow the plant on their side of the pond? Do, say, British tobacco companies sell their cigarettes back to America? Seems a bit pointless, doesn’t it? Particularly if they just import the grown and cut-up plants.
There are many brands of cigarettes in various countries all over the world that aren’t sold in the US.
Now a lot of American cigarettes are made from Brazilan tobacco. Also places like Zimbabwe grow tobacco too. I don’t think tobacco is grown in Europe. The main reason RJ Reynolds and others buy from those places is lower price. In the past 10 years the amount of tobacco grown in the US has dropped by over 50% due to the foreign producers with lower prices. Tobacco farmers now want to scrap the price support system that has been in place for decades so they can compete with foreign farmers.
Also, many American brands are made under license in other countries. My Marlboro Lights are made in Austria, and the filters have yellow paper. They don’t taste the same as M Lights in the US.
Tobacco as a cash crop, as I understand it, tends to deplete (if that’s the proper word) the soil where it’s grown. So while it’s profitable to grow one year, it’s not profitable to grow every year, as the quality will drop.
According to new EU regulation, the pack must have a warning which is at least 50% of the size of the pack. They also carry new warning messages:
“Smoking may harm your sperm and lower your fertility”
“Smoking may cause illness leading to impotence”
and my favorite:
“Smoking may lead to a slow and painful death”
And they’re not allowed to use the word ‘light’ in the name anymore.
I only smoke when drinking alcohol, so I’m not overly concerned.
I used to smoke Davidof cigarettes, which were imported from Germany. On the pack, it said, “Made with Virginia tobacco”. It always seemed funny that the tobacco was grown in my state, then shipped to Germany, then shipped back to Virginia.
But, they were good smokes. I’m still glad I quit though.
I do know that a majority of Canadian cigarettes are made from the tobacco that is harvested in Southern Ontario. Companies such as Imperial Tobacco and RJR MacDonalds even have plants set up in the area to process the tobacco.
I don’t find it too odd that a company would import a product from one place, and then sell it back in its refined form. It would be done that way if say, the processing procedures in Country A are sub par to Country B’s, but the tobacco grown in Country A is better than B’s.
YWalker, whatever makes it possible, I can assure you that in a small area of Southern Ontario, tobacco is indeed a big business, though probably not as big now since fewer people are smoking. The county I grew up in did not support tobacco, but the next one over did, and when I was a kid it was quite noticeable how much more prosperous they were. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if tobacco could be grown farther north in Europe than the Greece and Italy that have already been mentioned.
I believe it has something to do with the processing - flue cured tobacco as someone mentioned above. A carton of US made marlboros are still about 25-30 dollars.
My dad says tobacco always grew pretty much all over the world, but was pulled up/destroyed as a weed until Europeans saw Native Americans smoking it. When I posted the OP, I thought that it originally only grew in America, and Europeans just brought some seeds back or something.
Thanks for all the replies–this is quite informative. Any more international tobacco info?
My dad said tobacco always grew pretty much all over the world, but was pulled up/destroyed as a weed until Europeans saw Native Americans smoking it. When I posted the OP, I thought that it originally only grew in America, and Europeans just brought some seeds back or something.
Thanks for all the replies–this is quite informative. Any more international tobacco info?
Tobacco is the major export of Zimbabwe and a few other African countries. I remember as a child going on a field trip to a tobacco farm and then to the auction house where they sold the bales. Very interesting how they plant, cure and pack the tobacco. They also manufacture cigarettes in many many parts of the world, including Southern Africa. And how could you forget Cuban cigars? The tobacco for those is grown and processed in Cuba…
This is only mostly true. A somewhat open secret is that since the late 90’s a good portion of Cuban cigars are being made with imported leaf, this was a result of the Cuban government effort to double its production of cigars every couple of years. There just aren’t enough tobacco crops in Cuba for that level of production. Consequently tobacco leaf is being imported and used, mostly in the filler, primarily from Brazil, and I’ve also heard Rumania or Hungary. This has lead to a significant decline in the quality of Cuban cigars.
It is. At least, it’s grown in south-western France, so I assume it’s grown too in other countries, at least in southern europe though I’ve no clue about the kind of climate needed to grow tobacco.
Also, someone said that the same brand of cigarette can have a significantly different taste, depending on the country where it’s produced. That’s true. I quit smoking recently, but I experienced it. I used to smoke marlboro lights and with the steep price increase in France during the last year, smuggled cigarettes began to apear all over the place. They came from various countries (Egyptia, Senegal,…and the USA!) and could have different taste, indeed. The most different were the west-african ones, though the packaging was exactly the same (except for the legal mentions or such things) than all other marlboro lights.
Obviously, the same brand sell/pproduce in various countries significantly different cigarettes, I assume made with different tobaccos, but under identical packaging.
I was in a small town in the southern part of Brasil one time (I can’t remember the name of course but I think it was in the state of Rio Grande do Sul) when a friend told me it was the Ciggarete capital of Brasil. Apparently PM or someone else has a huge manufacturing or curing plant there.