•History of Tobacco
Tobacco has a long history in the Americas. The Mayan Indians of Mexico carved drawings in stone showing tobacco use. These drawings date back to somewhere between 600 to 900 A.D. Tobacco was grown by American Indians before the Europeans came from England, Spain, France, and Italy to North America. Native Americans smoked tobacco through a pipe for special religious and medical purposes. They did not smoke every day.
By the 1800's, many people had begun using small amounts of tobacco. Some chewed it. Others smoked it occasionally in a pipe, or they hand-rolled a cigarette or cigar. On the average, people smoked about 40 cigarettes a year. The first commercial cigarettes were made in 1865 by Washington Duke on his 300-acre farm in Raleigh, North Carolina. His hand-rolled cigarettes were sold to soldiers at the end of the Civil War.
James Bonsack invented the cigarette-making machine in 1881 that made cigarette smoking widespread. Bonsack's cigarette machine could make 120,000 cigarettes a day. He went into business with Washington Duke's son, James "Buck" Duke. They built a factory and made 10 million cigarettes their first year and about one billion cigarettes five years later. The first brand of cigarettes were packaged in a box with baseball cards and were called Duke of Durham. Buck Duke and his father started the first tobacco company in the U.S. They named it the American Tobacco Company.
•Duke of Durham: first machine-rolled cigarettes
The American Tobacco Company was the largest and most powerful tobacco company until the early 1900's. Several companies were making cigarettes by the early 1900's. In 1902 Philip Morris company came out with its Marlboro brand.
With Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, American Brands, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson, and Liggett & Myers (now called the Brooke Group) came into existence.
•The cigarette’s health warning
In 1964 the Surgeon General of the U.S. (the chief doctor for the country) wrote a report about the dangers of cigarette smoking. He said that the nicotine and tar in cigarettes cause lung cancer. In 1965 the Congress of the U.S. passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act. It said that every cigarette pack must have a warning label on its side stating "Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health.’’
In 1984 Congress passed another law called the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act. It said that the cigarette companies every three months had to change the warning labels on cigarette packs. It created four different labels for the companies to rotate.
•What is tobacco?
Tobacco is an agricultural crop that is used to make cigarettes. It is grown all over the world and supports a billion-dollar industry. Tobacco is dried and processed, then either placed into cigarettes and processed, or manufactured for chewing tobacco. The psychoactive ingredient is nicotine, a stimulant, but more than 4,000 other chemicals (2,000 of which are known to be poisonous) are present in cigarettes.Tobacco is a nervous system stimulant that triggers complex biochemical and neurotransmitter disruptions. It elevates heart rate and blood pressure, constricts blood vessels, irritates lung tissue, and diminishes your ability to taste and smell.
Tobacco is a green, leafy plant that is grown in warm climates. After it is picked, it is dried, ground up, and used in different ways. It can be smoked in a cigarette, pipe, or cigar. It can be chewed (called smokeless tobacco or chewing tobacco) or sniffed through the nose (called snuff).
Nicotine is one of the more than 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes and its smoke. It is the chemical that makes tobacco addictive or habit forming. Once we smoke, chew, or sniff tobacco, nicotine goes into our bloodstream, and our body wants more. The nicotine in tobacco makes it a drug. This means that when we use tobacco, it changes our body in some way. Because nicotine is a stimulant, it speeds up the nervous system, so we feel like we have more energy. It also makes the heart beat faster and raises blood pressure
•Risks associated
Addiction
Nicotine in tobacco, a strong poison, is the most addictive of all drugs. It stimulates the same areas of the brain as cocaine and amphetamines, and tolerance to nicotine develops faster than to cocaine or heroin. Neurochemically, the body adapts to the toxins in tobacco a few hours after smoking. Soon smoking becomes necessary to feel "normal."
•How Nicotine works
The human brain reacts the same way to nicotine that it does to cocaine and heroin. Nicotine stimulates the release of a chemical messenger in the brain. This messenger is responsible for feelings of pleasure. This is why nicotine is put in the category of drugs called stimulants. A stimulant is a drug that produces a short-lived increase in the body's activity. Other drugs in this category include cocaine, morphine, and amphetamines.
Mild "nicotine highs" occur in beginning smokers, but tolerance to these effects develops rapidly. Tolerance means that a smoker will need more and more nicotine to reach the same high. Addiction may begin with someone's first experience with nicotine.
When someone "puffs" on a cigarette, a mixture of smoke and air enters their mouth. Inhaling moves this mixture to the lungs, where nicotine moves into the blood. The blood absorbs the nicotine extremely fast. This is because it only takes one minute for all of the blood in the body to cycle through the lungs. As the blood moves through the body, nicotine is brought to the brain. The nicotine reaches the brain about ten seconds from the time the smoker inhales
•Health Risks
•Cancer -- Cancer of the lungs, mouth, throat, esophagus and more.
•Frequent colds.
•Chronic bronchitis.
•Emphysema.
•Stroke.
•Heart disease.
•Other Negatives
•Stained teeth.
•Bad breath.
•Clothes, hair, hands, room and car reek of smoke.
•Premature face wrinkles.
•Diminished sense of taste and smell.
•Smoking drains your wallet.
•Chewing tobacco leaves gross stuff between your teeth
Familiar Chemicals in Cigarettes
Chemical Found in:
carbon monoxide car exhaust
nicotine bug sprays
tar material to make roads
arsenic
ammonia
hydrogen cyanide
cyanide
acetone
butane
DDT
formaldehyde
sulfuric acid
cadmium
freon
Generally tobacco means a leaf product containing 1-3 % of the alkaloid nicotine which produces a narcotic effect when it is chewed, smoked or snuffed.
It comes from the plant N.Tobacum and N.Rustica provides tobacco in Europe.
Jean Nicot is given the credit for this from 1561.Hence, Nicotina and Nicotine incorporates his name.
•Manufacturing Process:
Tobacco grows in warm, even climate on light, well-drained, carefully fertilized soils, that receive weekly moisture from rain or irrigation.
Special seedbeds, either open or covered with cloth, glass or plastic provides transplants for the fields.
Plants are usually topped (blossom removed to allow the upper leaves expand.
Harvest proceeds by cutting the whole stock or picking leaves successfully as they ripen (primed). Primed leaves are supported on strings , wires or sticks.
Curing (drying) is done in ventilated barns with natural or artificial heat. In some areas, machine harvested leaves are packed in special frames for cultivating in heat regulated, forced-air chambers.
The drying time (2-6 weeks) and temperature (70-170*F or 21-77*C)
influence the amount of changes that occur in proteins, carbohydrates, organic acids, alkaloids and enzymes in the leaf.
Before inserting the leaves in cigars, cigarettes, etc. lined leafs are fermented by storing them for 6 weeks to 2 years at about 15 % moisture and 80-110*F ( 27-438C).
The methods used above depends on type of tobacco, intended use and local customs.
•Diseases Associated with Tobacco
There are almost 25 principal known pathogens that attack the crop from the seed sowing stage to the marketing stage.
Root Knot: this is caused by Nematode Meloidogyne sp. And is considered as the most important disease. It occurs in all warmer countries, especially in sandy soils. Diseased plants have stunted growth and leaves that yellow prematurely.
The other diseases associated are Black Shank and Bacterial Wilt.
•Cigarettes
These have long thread-like, shredded tobacco prepared by using machines which are capable of manufacturing 10,000 cigarettes in a minute.
These are never individually made but there is a long cigarette paper in which tobacco is placed and the paper is glued and then cut accordingly and then cut accordingly and the filter is inserted at the end which has a diameter longer than the cigarette but has
been compressed and fitted on the end with a golden brown paper covering.
Filter: This helps in reducing the amount of nicotine that goes along with the smoke to the person’s body and is made up of cellulose fibers which are very fine.
There are certain cigarettes (Phillip Morris) which have a double filter namely, regular filler and triangles of charcoal.
Virginia Tobacco: This is the best and different cuts are available as Navy, Silk, Fine and Flake cut