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Smoking, at the beginning of human civilisation, was not an object of mass consumption but something sacred: it was exclusive to priests. The Mayans and Aztecs, as early as around 1,000 BC, blew smoke towards the Sun and in the direction of the cardinal points to communicate with the deities. The cloud of smoke, 'immaterial' just as a spirit might be, was an important religious tool.

Tobacco smoking, first described at the time of the discovery of America by chroniclers such as Bartolomeo de Las Casas, was common among the Taino (a pre-Columbian population living in what is now Santo Domingo): 'The Indians mix their breath with an herb called pentum (or tabago) and blow like hell'. Years later, the Spanish governor of Santo Domingo, Don Fernando Oviedo, added: 'Among the many satanic arts, the natives possess a highly nefarious one, the inhalation of smoke from the leaves they call tobacco, which produces in them a profound state of unconsciousness'.

Christopher Columbus showing objects to Native American men and women on the beach.

The function of tobacco smoke among Native Americans was therefore to induce an altered state of consciousness by inhaling it forcefully and in large quantities. Tobacco was also chewed or snorted in powder form for more common uses, with alleged healing powers, or mixed with ash and used as chewing gum. The Yanomami of Brazil still use it in this way, apparently with positive effects on the pH of their mouths and the health of their teeth (based on research by two dentists in Turin). The Indians of the North American plains smoked the pipe, but only in spiritual ceremonies or during councils of the elders.

Tobacco arrived in Europe. From America, tobacco made its way to Europe, brought by the companions of Christopher Columbus, in particular Rodrigo de Jerez.

In 1560 a Portuguese ambassador to France, Jean Nicot, promoted tobacco as a medicinal plant (and from him came the name of the active ingredient, nicotine). But it soon became a raw material to be smoked by European sailors and soldiers.

This is not to say, however, that people in Europe or Asia had never smoked before the discovery of tobacco in America. It was something else.

What did people smoke before that? The Aryans of present-day Iran and the ancient Scythian population - known to the Greek historian and traveller Herodotus - used hemp seeds (Cannabis sativa), in other words marijuana, to inhale second-hand smoke. Herodotus recounts: 'They slip under a tent made of blankets and throw the seeds on hot stones; the seeds burn, producing a smoke that no Greek steam bath could surpass. The Scythians scream with joy...'. We can imagine why: with that passive smoke, they were getting high.

The Sumerians, much earlier, used opium in special ceremonies, in the form of tincture and balls to swallow, and perhaps smoked it. Opium in the Far East and hashish in the Middle East became widespread in the Middle Ages. The former became a social scourge in colonial China, where the Opium War broke out in the first half of the 19th century.

From sacred to poison. But back to tobacco, how did it go from being a sacred and healing substance in antiquity to a poison in consumer society? As early as the 17th century, the English began to exploit tobacco smoke, which found consumers not only among soldiers, but also among intellectuals in the form of cigars or pipe tobacco: they were writers, poets and painters who also wanted to challenge the rigid customs of the time. Women also entered the scene and founded the Order of the Snuffbox in England.

Painters such as Adriaen Brower disseminated the image of the pipe smoker and Sebastian Bach composed a composition in honour of the smoker. Among the bourgeois invited to dinner, people used to smoke in a room with a jacket provided by the host: when they returned to the dining room, they left this jacket, called a dinner jacket, and put on their own jacket, which did not smell of smoke. So you didn't bother the other guests. But the use of pipes and cigars was still in use before the 'smoking plague' spread without limit. It started like this: one day in 1832, Turkish Muslim soldiers besieging the city of Acre tried to stuff tobacco into the paper cylinders in which gunpowder was stored and lit them up to smoke. They invented the cigarette, the most aggressive and efficient virus of the smoking pandemic.

A 16th century Dutch print depicts a pipe smoker.

Doping. And from Turkey to Great Britain, from France to Germany, the machines of the industrial revolution began to manufacture millions and millions of cigarettes. The terrain was the right one for an evolution: partly because of the tonic effects of nicotine and partly because of tobacco's ancient and presumed magical-healing properties, cigarettes were considered a sort of doping for soldiers at the front, just as pipe tobacco was recommended to prelates as an antidote against sexual temptations.

Thus, during the American Civil War, a lighter-tasting and more aromatic cigarette made its appearance, first among Confederate soldiers and then also among Union soldiers. But more addictive. It was a promising means of diffusion for the cigarette industry which, at the end of the War of Secession, spread everywhere. cuvie plus

James Dean in a scene from the 1956 film "The Giant". During the final part of the filming the actor passed away. At that time it was common and realistic to see actors with a cigarette in their mouth.

Finally, in 1880, a machine appeared that could guarantee low prices for the production of large quantities of cigarettes, and advertising did the rest. Advertising then did the rest, recommending, for example, the use of cigarettes to maintain a figure instead of eating sweets. 

In the films made between the First and Second World War, almost all the stars smoked, just to set an example. At the end of the Second World War, the cartons of cigarettes that American soldiers received for free replaced money in black market transactions. Then they became popular products for governments to charge consumption taxes on.

In the 1950s and 1960s, under the guise of realism, actors, singers and writers appeared with cigarettes everywhere, in theatre, cinema and even on the small screen at home. Cigarettes had definitively transformed the sacred and impromptu custom of smoking into a daily vice for the masses. And into a state drug.

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