History of smoking

The history of smoking dates back to as early as 4000 BC in the Americas in shamanistic rituals. With the arrivals of the Europeans in the 16th century, the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco quickly spread. With the modernization of farm equipment and manufacturing bore the cigarette following reconstruction in the United States. This method of consumption quickly expanded the scope of consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s.

Cannabis was common in the Middle East before the arrival of tobacco, and is known to have existed in at least 5000 BC. Early consumption of cannabis was a common social activity involving the type of water pipe called a hookah.

Previously eaten for its medicinal properties, opium smoking became widespread during the 19th century from British trade with China. This spawned the many infamous Opium dens. In the latter half of the century, opium smoking became popular in the artistic communities of Europe. While Opium dens continued to exist throughout the world, the trend among the Europeans abated during the First World War, and among the Chinese during the cultural revolution.

More widespread cigarette usage as well as increased life expectancy during the 1920s made adverse health effects more noticeable. In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published formal statistical evidence of a lung cancer–tobacco link, which subsequently led a strong anti-smoking movement in Nazi Germany. The subject remained largely taboo until 1954 with the British Doctors Study, and in 1964 United States Surgeon General's report. Tobacco became stigmatized, which led to the largest civil settlement in United States history, the Tobacco Master Settlement (MSA).

Smoking has been practiced in one form or another since ancient times. Tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs were smoked all over the Americas as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals and originated in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes. Many ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, burnt incense as a part of religious rituals, as did the Israelites and the later Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches.

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