Way back, when tobacco first took off as a cool passtime, why did people begin smoking it in the first place? It’s not like it’s mind altering or anything, which would account for the use of all the other drugs on this planet. Most people’s first experience of the blasted weed is pretty unpleasant, but of course nowadays we have advertising and peer pressure which encourages us to go beyond the first toke to become addicts.
What about when it wasn’t quite as universal? What on earth was the attraction to tobacco then? Why was it touted as this great thing you sucked into your lungs when it didn’t even give you a slightly skewed picture of the world around you?
Well, it is not quite true that it is not mind altering. It is relaxing, after all. And cool. Even back in the early 50s when that usage of “cool” didn’t exist. It was adult. And the proportion of adult smokers, at least male adult smokers, was higher than today. So kids who wanted to look grown-up would start smoking. I cannot now really picture what it was like. One difference though: in those days the negative health effects were not apparent. Or as apparent. I think the first time I became aware of it was a major campaign on the health effects of smoking was featured in the Reader’s Digest. RD has never had cigarette advertising (in those days they had no advertising at all) and could afford, unlike most magazines, to come down hard on smoking. Even so it looked like a scare tactic. In reality, they probably understated the case, although only because the effects were not really known. In fact, the main negative effect was thought to be lung cancer, while the worst effects are probably the cardio-vascular.
It is much harder for me to understand why kids start today. All the negatives are well-known and it is not thought an adult thing. My perception is that the only adults who smoke are those who started as kids and cannot stop. Very few people start over 20 and those who do find it much easier to stop.
Michael, I’m talking about when it was first ‘discovered’ and transported to the New World (was it Raleigh? or Drake?..ok, I failed history orright), and why they reckoned it would take off like crazy (which it then did).
What was so attractive about it? If you compare it to opium, marijuana and the other more ‘altering’ drugs that were around in those days, it certainly seems to be phenomenally boring. How come it became popular then?
I don’t believe it’s relaxing, except to an addicted person who compares it to how he feels when he can’t get a dose. IIRC, nicotine is a stimulant. Very few non-users who take a hit would describe it as relaxing.
The same might be said of the teetotaler’s initial response to a snoot full of vodka.
I’m told that nicotine is an appetite supressant, and that alot of women smoke to help lose weight.
As for how it probably started, my theory is: centuries ago, a bunch of people were sitting around a campfire and some guy threw in some tobacco leaves. The tobacco smoke somehow appealed to them, so they began to burn tobacco leaves on purpose. Smoking evolved from there.
Well, some other species probably said, “Hey, just try it! What, are you scared? …”
It’s doubtful anyone can establish with any reliability why the American Indians began smoking tobacco. The operative psychoactive substance in tobacco, nicotine, is a stimulant and the effects are quite powerful when one begins smoking, so the idea that “It’s not like it’s mind altering or anything…” is as patently absurd as saying alcohol or caffeine are not mind altering.
And it is habituating, which was generally recognized in the populace well before the studies of the last couple of decades. And I doubt many really had strong doubts about potential health effects before the Surgeon General’s report in 1964.
Why do people smoke? It feels good, it is comforting in the near term, etc. Why do they do any number of other things that have identifiable health risks, such as eat bacon? Drink Margaritas? Fuck?
So that they’d have something to do after sex?
Wow. Now that’s mind-boggingly STUPID for you.
I am quite a heavy smoker, and one of the major reasons I don’t stop is that every time I try, I eat like a madman.
But any reciprocal conclusion is kinda nuts, imho.
(Oh, and btw: Yes, smoking is preferable to being overweight, at least at my age, 20.)
True, but after about 10 minutes he might encounter some relaxing effects from that snoot. You don’t need to be an addict for alcohol to have that effect on you.
Ringo, my point was that compared to other drugs, tobacco is pretty tame in it’s psychoactive effects. In fact, so tame as to be not worth the effort for our ancestors in the first place!
I don’t see how you can compare it to alcohol when booze has an immediate and noticeable effect upon the system, while the stimulatory effects of tobacco are barely evident, especially when one has the very first cigarette. It’s not like coca leaves for godsakes!
And I’m not asking why people smoke NOW (I AM a smoker by the way!), the question was directed to why it became popular IN THE VERY BEGINNING given that COMPARED to other drugs, it’s a really piss-poor version of a psychoactive.
I’ll try to find a cite for this tomorrow, but I’m fairly certain that the tobacco used in South America 400 or 500 years ago or so (when it was first imported into Europe) was considerably stronger than today’s - to the point of being hallucinogenic, or very nearly.
Thanks Pipeliner. If as you say, tobacco was indeed a hallucinogen in 'dem olden days, that would explain why it became popular. That answers my question sufficiently.
Now I just have to figure out how to rid myself of the buggers!!
Some years ago I read a book on the cultivation of a different psychoactive substance. The last bit of the book was a recommendation for growing tobacco. IIRC the author(s) stated that older tobaccoes were far more powerful and one only needed 3 or 4 smokes a day. Obviously this did not suit the tobacco industry who bred strains designed to deliver only enough goodies to cut the craving temporarily. I am sure that they also stated that in all societies that simultaneously grew tobacco and marijuana, the tobacco was smoked and the marijuana used as hemp. Apparently seed stock for these “original” tobaccoes was still available then, I’m talking 1970’s.
Tobacco and Shamanism in South America by Johannes Wilbert has some good information on this topic, as has Michael J. Harner’s work.
There’s an interesting article here on the history of tobacco use, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I am a non-smoker that has smoked a few cigarettes in the past. For a non-smoker, smoking a cigarette gives a powerful buzz. The native americans smoking the raw tobacco leaves were smoking something much more like a cigar than a cigarette - I would guess that inhaling a cigar would give an even greater buzz than a cigarette.
Also, in most areas of north america, the opium poppies weren’t sprouting up like weeds the way tobacco was. So you go with what you got.
Hey kambuckta, I didn’t mean to rub you the wrong way or anything. My point was a counterpoint to yours in that I do believe that the psychoactive properties of nicotine account for a lot of the attraction to and persistence of smoking behavior.
While not quite as in-your-face as, say, LSD, nicotine does, as attested to by shelbo above, possess quite the psychotropic power to gain one’s attention.
When I first tried chew and smokes…
It made me feel VERY good, and there IS an effect. People said that I would be sick at first, …nope!
That was the fist time.
Since then I could do it once a week (for no more than a month), to once every 6 months.
I haven’t had one in five months or so…
Once it happens again (if it happens again), It should make for a better night.
Those “The Truth” BS ads make whatever urge there is for me to have a cigarette heighten. A lot of the: “Cigarettes include… same as the stuff that’s in your poop” is in a lot of other shit aside from your poop.
I would love to do one right in front of those pansies!
However, I would fight for places to be smoke free unless an inclosed smoke area!!!
I understand and agree 100% with that!! I can’t stand bitchy smokers any less than stupid ass anti-tobacco people
The Native Americans used tobacco as a ritual drug - but I gather the OP was asking about Euro-folks using tobacco.
Well, it was the natives who introduced the drug, obviously. A toke on old-style tobacco was probably at least as stimulating as a cup of coffee or tea. The advantage of tobacco, however, is that it would grow in the local neighborhood and did not require importing from halfway around the world.
An occassional smoke - once a week or so - using tobacco that didn’t have modern pesticides and fertilizers on it was probably less of a health hazard than sucking on two packs a day of the chemical-drenched cigarettes that have become standard fare these days.