Donna Saslove And Simon Lugassy - JO LEE Magazine

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN NUTS
Smoking Tobacco
By John Paul Jarvis
Toronto – Canada
This is not about personal piety. I
venerate Hunter S. Thompson.
As a child I was baffled by the act
of smoking. Lighting up, absurd in
its performance and so dangerously
addicting, appeared pointless to a
three-year-old.
I knew with certainty that smoking
wasn’t right. Recall that it was a
youngster who blurted out “the
Emperor has no clothes” in Hans
Christian Andersen’s 1837 classic.
The first recorded health warning
came from a German scientist, Fritz
Lickint in 1929. In a published
paper and supported by formal
statistical data, he linked smoking
and lung cancer.
An anti smoking lobby emanated
from Dresden. Although visionary,
this movement in post war
Germany was quashed by American
beneficence.
I was impressed by the long-range
retribution of the Marshall Plan; the
United States, a producer, shipped
free tobacco to Germany; with
24,000 tons in 1948 and 69,000 tons
in 1949. Per capita yearly cigarette
consumption in post war Germany
steadily rose from 460 in 1950 to
1,523 in 1963. Ironically, this is
the same strategy used by cartels
to embed illicit drugs in the USA.
What goes around comes around, I
guess.
The tobacco plant, nicotiana, was
named in honor of Jean Nicot,
French ambassador to Portugal.
Nicot sent tobacco, as a medicine, to
the Court of Catherine de’ Medici
in 1560. Tobacco soon flourished
in England. Like tea, coffee and
opium, tobacco was just one of many
intoxicants introduced as a form of
medicine that quickly became world
commodities.
In 1612, six years after the
settlement of Jamestown, John Rolfe
was credited as the first settler to
successfully raise tobacco as a cash
crop. An industry was born that
sustains until today.
At the same time Moroccan caravans
brought tobacco to Timbuktu
and the Portuguese brought the
commodity (and the plant) to
southern Africa, establishing the
popularity of tobacco throughout all
of Africa by the 1650s.
Tobacco has a long history of
ceremonial use in Native American
cultures, playing an important role in
the political, economic and cultural
history of both North and South
America. The plant is indigenous
in varieties throughout most of the
Continent.
Tobacco is perfectly engineered as
a nicotine delivery device for the
blended active substances triggered
by combustion, producing chemical
reactions in nerve endings that
heighten heart rate, memory,
alertness and reaction time.
Dopamine and endorphins, linked
with pleasure, are released.
Men smokers outnumber women
but there is an alarming shrinkage in
the gender gap within the youngest
group, teenagers. Lower income and
the poor are more likely to smoke,
targeting this demographic solely,
and making the only growth market
for tobacco the third world. It’s
always been a tough business.
JL
Jo Lee Power 2011 105