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rolls of dried leaves that they set
afire and smoked. Sailors on these
expeditions tried this unusual weed
and liked it. More than like it, they
carne to
crave
it, and so carried to–
bacco leaves and seeds home with
them and included them in provi–
sions for succeeding expeditions to
other parts of the world. Within a
few decades, th·e tobacco plant and
24
ha bit had literally been spread
around the world.
Tobacco proved to be immedi–
ately popular wherever it was in–
troduced- too popular, it seems, for
many secular and religious authori–
ties of the day. They considered it a
strange, noxious weed, dangerous to
public morals and health.
Pope Urban
VII
issued a formal
bull against tobacco in 1642. and
Pope lnnocent X issued another in
1650. But in 1725. Benedict XII I an–
nulled all edicts against tobacco be–
cause they had failed to dissuade
laymen and clergy alike from using
it- and because the Pope himself
had a penchant for s nuff.
Most of the states of Europe at
one time or another have prohibited
tobacco. And Sultan Murad IV de–
creed the death penalty for smoking
tobacco in Constantinople in 1633-
but to no avail. l ts use continued to
spread. In the Ottoman Empire.
even the fear of death could not
overcome the craving for tobacco.
" For thy sake, tobacco.
1
would do
anything but die," wrote Charles
Lamb in the eighteenth ccntury.
The Sultan found that many of his
subjects were willing to risk that last
step-as the chronicle of his savage
slaughter of smokers testifies.
More Than a Vice?
No culture that has ever taken to
tobacco has ever given it up. And
sorne researchers say there is a good
reason for this: The nicotine in to–
bacco becomes something tobacco
users crave.
Sorne have gone as far as to sug–
gest that tobacco users can develop
a dependence for the drug- psychic,
at least , and maybe even physical.
The theory of the nicotine-depen–
dence syndrome of tobacco has
been espoused by the Addiction Re–
search Unit (ARU) of the lnsti tute
of Psychia try (London. England)- a
unit initially established to study
heroin addiction. Further, the Royal
College of Physicians reported in
1971: "The smoking habit certainly
conforms to the definition of drug
dependence given by Paton: ' Drug
dependence arises when. as a result
of giving a drug, force s- physi–
ological. biochemical, social or
environmental- are set up which
predispose to continue drug
use' .... The remarkable spread of
smoking throughout tbe world and
the difficulty that most smokers find
in abstaining suggests that the crav–
ing has a pharmacological basis"
(Smoking and Health Now,
p.
112).
Psychologist Stanley Schachter of
Columbia University. himself a
chain-smoker, in 1977 conceded af–
ter four years of research on smok-
The
PLAIN TRUTH July 1977