Tobacco is a plant containing nicotine, a psychoactive chemical which affects the human brain. It is used as a recreational drug and is consumed mainly by smoking in a variety of forms.
Pipeweed[1] was native to northern Terranova. When Europeans arrived there, they brought the plant back with them. They also cultivated it in Atlantis. Pipeweed soon became an important staple of French and Spanish Atlantis.
The native Brownskins cultivated and used burnweed long before the arrival of the greenskins. While many greenskins thought the habit disgusting, some "went native" and began using the plant too. Rekek was one such greenskin. When he lit up a cigar, his companion Havv began complaining about the stink and how it was bad for the wind. Rekek happened to like the smell and felt it calmed his night jitters so he ignored Havv's complaints.[2]
Tobacco was seen as one of the most disgusting of vices by the mid-21st century in the home timeline. However, smoking was quite common in the alternates.
Tobacco had long been recognized as posing a threat to people's health. However, even the most authoritarian government could not keep the people from smoking it.[3]
Tobacco was smoked through pipes and cigars throughout the world. In some cultures, however, certain methods of smoking tobacco carried an effeminate connotation, such as cigar-smoking in Shqiperi.
Tobacco was grown in lands south of the Raumsdalian Empire and carried north into imperial territory by traders from that region. Among Raumsdalians, smoking tobacco through pipes and in cigar form enjoyed moderate popularity. The weed never established itself north to Bizogot territory, though a few Bizogots who traveled extensively in the Empire developed a taste for it, and the occasional Raumsdalian trader would carry some on northern sojourns.
Tobacco was introduced to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers and colonists. It was smoked in pipes and was popular among both Spaniards and Englishmen. Both Lope de Vega and Christopher Marlowe were very fond of tobacco; Marlowe once blasphemously commented that the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist could be improved if tobacco replaced the bread and wine as its physical medium. However, William Shakespeare found it disgusting.
Tobacco was grown both in the US and CS, though Confederate tobacco was widely considered to be of far superior quality. It was most commonly made into cigarettes. Tobacco use was popular throughout the North American continent but was religiously proscribed by the Mormons.
Tobacco was an addictive weed from the Sunset Lands. By the modern era, smoking was known to be harmful to one's health, but this did not stop all use of it. Smoking was much more common in poor, backward Europe than in the developed world.
While tobacco was universally popular in the North American Union, regulations on it differed between provinces. For example, Maryland had a heavy tobacco tax, while Virginia did not. Maryland revenue inspectors searched random cars at provincial border checkpoints to discourage smuggling.[4]
Tobacco use was common the world over when the Race's Conquest Fleetarrived onEarth in 1942. The ensuing war disrupted tobacco supplies all over the world, and tobacco products (the most popular of these being cigarettes) were regularly available only in areas where tobacco was grown.
On a cinematic outing in 1943, Sam Yeager observed that President Roosevelt, in a fireside chat shown before the film, had very rare access to prime cigars. Yeager was so grateful for Roosevelt's bold leadership in time of national emergency, that he did not begrudge FDR this well-deserved luxury.
After the war, tobacco supplies returned to normal both in independent human powers and in the Race's colonies, and world tobacco consumption returned to prewar levels. The Race's doctors determined that tobacco was carcinogenic, but this only slightly diminished the plant's popularity, mainly among human medical professionals. This much perplexed the Race, whose most popular recreational drug, ginger, had no such obvious deleterious health effects.
