A short history of smoking tobacco
Multiple plants in the genus named Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae are generally known under the name of tobacco, including more than seventy known types. For approximately eight thousand years, tobacco has been growing wild in North America and South America, but human beings only started using it for personal reasons around two thousand years ago. Chewing and smoking tobacco was originally a practice taking place in certain cultural and religious surroundings, such as ceremonies and different types of events.
In Europe, the first individual that has ever used tobacco was Christopher Columbus, a navigator that is mistakenly considered the first to discover America. Europeans only introduced the cultivation of tobacco in 1531 and it quickly developed into a complex industry branch, being used as a monetary standard by the year of 1700.
Tobacco can be consumed using different methods such as smoking, chewing and sniffing. Over time, multiple tobacco products have been invented and commercialized, including cigarettes (the most common), cigars and snus (portioned or loose, which is typically taken by placing it under the upper lip for a certain amount of time). Another popular way of consuming this substance is hookah tobacco, also known as shisha, narghile, maassel or waterpipe, a flavored tobacco type that was invented in India around the 15th century. Due to the constant evolution of technology, this concept led to the development of electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes, mostly known as vapes), these being very popular nowadays because of their wide variety of flavors.