Tobacco, seduction and puritanism.(Society)

TODAY 13,000 PEOPLE will die from tobacco-related disease. Today 90,000 children will smoke their first cigarette. Most often tobacco is discussed as if it had only one face, and that is of disease. This is an empty perspective.

In an attempt to crystallise my thoughts on this topic, I've watched films including The Truth about Cigarettes, Thank You for Smoking, The Insider, Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Carmen, read historical works such as Tobacco in History by Jordan Goodman, polemical tributes such as Cigarettes are

Sublime by Richard Klein, and websites such as those of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Quit, British American Tobacco, the American National Institutes of Health, and promotional material from the Mornington Peninsula Regional Galleries exhibition, "Warning--Smoking Has Been Linked to Some of the Most Powerful Images of the Twentieth Century". If what follows seems like a pot pourri, then think of it more as a personal blend.

 
   Metse inhaled deeply, and as he finished one 
   cigarette an attending shaman handed him another 
   lighted one. Metse inhaled all the smoke, and soon 
   began to evince considerable physical distress. After 
   about ten minutes his right leg began to tremble. 
   Later his left arm began to twitch. He swallowed 
   smoke as well as inhaling it, and soon was groaning 
   in pain. His respiration became labored, and he 
   groaned with every exhalation. By this time the 
   smoke in his stomach was causing him to retch. The 
   more he inhaled the more nervous he became ... He 
   took another cigarette and continued to inhale until 
   he was near to collapse. Suddenly he "died", 
   flinging his arms outward and straightening his legs 
   stiffly ... He remained in this state of collapse 
   nearly fifteen minutes. When Metse had revived 
   himself two attendant shamans rubbed his arms. 
   One of the shamans drew on a cigarette and blew 
   smoke gently on his chest and legs, especially on 
   places that he indicated by stroking himself. 

Gertrude Dole reported this rather counter-cultural sounding incident of an orthodox "death and resurrection" ceremony among some Amazonian aborigines. Shamans were central to the physical and spiritual life of the pre-European peoples in the Americas. They had at hand a natural pharmacy of over 140 psychotropic plants for spiritual and medicinal purposes. Powerful plants such as datura, mescal and peyote were used occasionally based on their suitability for a specific ailment or ceremony, and on their local availability. However, the central and most sacredly important component of the concoctions used was tobacco.

The shaman was skilled in the mixing of drugs and the dosing of patients. Tobacco and other drugs were taken as suppositories, brewed into potions, chewed, made into topical compresses, chaff or dust up the nose, or more frequently smoked through the mouth or nose. Pipes were popular in North America and cigars in South America, but the division was not absolute.

Tobacco was used from northern Canada to southern Chile and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The use and cultivation of tobacco were ubiquitous, with the less agricultural Northern Plains Indians such as the Crow also managing the cultivation of tobacco. Nicotiana tabacum was the main crop around the temperate and equatorial regions and Nicotiana rustica in the extreme north and south. The pre-European plants were many times more potent than currently cultivated varieties, and had their own locally unique narcotic properties.