Tobacco

Article on other languages:

del.icio.us del.icio.us
Digg Digg
Furl Furl
Reddit Reddit
Rojo Rojo
Add to OnlyWire
Tobacco
Flowering Nicotiana tabacum
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Solanales
Family: Solanaceae
Genus: Nicotiana
L.
Species

Numerous, see text


Tobacco is a plant of the nightshade family, found mainly in North America and South America. Dried tobacco leaves are often smoked in cigars, cigarettes and pipes, but can also be chewed in the mouth or sniffed in the nose. Tobacco contains a very powerful chemical called nicotine which makes it very hard for tobacco users to stop using it.

History

Native Americans used tobacco before Europeans arrived in America. These Europeans learned to smoke and brought it back to Europe, where it became very popular. At that time tobacco was usually smoked in a pipe.


The Europeans who moved to America began to farm tobacco so that they could sell it in Europe. This became one of the main causes of the African slave trade. In 1610 a European man called John Rolfe arrived in the American state of Virginia and set up a tobacco farm which made him very rich. Rolfe was the first farmer to use nicotiana tabacum, which is the type of tobacco most commonly smoked today. He also married Pocahontas, a Native American woman who became famous when went to live in London.

In the 17th and 18th centuries tobacco made farmers very rich and towns quickly grew in the states of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In 1883 one third of United States tax money came from tobacco.

Tobacco and health

Tobacco users (especially smokers) risk many very serious and often fatal illnesses, such as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and lung disease. The United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes tobacco use as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature (early) death worldwide".

Tobacco cigarette
This section is a stub. You can help by adding to it.

Growing tobacco

Top Ten Tobacco Producers - 2005
(million metric ton)
China 2.51
Brazil 0.88
India 0.60
United States 0.29
Indonesia 0.14
Turkey 0.14
Greece 0.12
Argentina 0.12
Italy 0.11
Pakistan 0.08
World Total 6.38
Source:
UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO)[1]


This short article can be made longer. You can help Wikipedia by adding to it.
Retrieved from "http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco"

More about Tobacco: tobacco pipe, tobacco product, smokeless tobacco, chewing tobacco, tobacco smoke shop, tobacco road, tobacco shop, tobacco company, copenhagen tobacco,

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.