tobacco
... Teem Drugs and Society Tobacco has a very extensive history throughout the world as well as in the United States. Tobacco was first used by the people of pre-Columbian Americas. ... Christopher Columbus brought a few leaves and seeds back with him to Europe but Europeans were not formally introduced to tobacco until diplomats such as Jean Nicot began to popularize its use in the mid 1500s. Tobacco was introduced to virtually all of Europe by 1565. Though tobacco was introduced throughout Europe by 1565, it was not cultivated in the colonies of North America until it was in Virginia in 1612 by John Rolfe. Seven years later it was the colony’s largest export, and over the next two centuries tobacco grew into a major cash crop. ... Tobacco then became very prominent and began to control the economy of the colonies. ... The tobacco industry had a recession from 1680 to 1720 but following it the industry boomed. By 1740 the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia and Maryland was exporting nearly half of the combined production of the world’s tobacco-raising regions. Also, around the same time period the use of the pipe spread to the working class, and we adopted the French way of using tobacco~ snuff. ... This new pepelete (cigarette) ushered an extraordinary worldwide growth in tobacco consumption and created one of the world’s largest industries. ... A good number of all of the famous Americans were smokers or at least had been seen publicly smoking or using some tobacco product at one time or another. Not only did so many famous Americans use tobacco products, most of the American soldiers used them during World War II.