Not necessarily cigars/cigarettes, but tobacco has also played an important role in some cultures. I doubt Native Americans were using tobacco, sometimes for ceremonial and religious purposes, due to marketing
> Tobacco is indeed native to the Americas, and early modern Europeans, Africans, and Asians did encounter tobacco smoking as a new practice without precedent in ancient texts or preexisting social conventions. But, as archaeologists and anthropologists have been documenting for decades, tobacco was not the only drug that the peoples of the Old World smoked—even before the voyages of Columbus.
that was harder to say when "Tobacco is Evil" propaganda dominated any discussion of smoking. Some of the old school mixtures are rough I'd rather smoke sawdust.
The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists.
Tobacco had a longstanding religious significance here in North America, that's how I was first introduced to it and I still appreciate it as part of sweat lodges or similar events. It makes more sense to me viewed in that light, a good analogy might be the bread and wine of a catholic mass.
It's interesting how early European accounts of Native American tobacco smoking don't seem to bear much similarity to my experiences of tobacco use. In this it describes the Taino becoming "almost drunk" off it. But the only time tobacco made me exhibit anything like that was when I accidentally inhaled way too much of a cigar and became physically ill and delirious. The experience was an extremely unpleasant one involving vomiting, tremors, having difficulty standing up, and slurring speech. But there was none of the "fun" parts of inebriation. I wasn't disinhibited or "loosened up," I just felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest and that I might die. I simply could not imagine anyone putting themselves through that on purpose as recreation.
I also never experienced hallucinations, which is another thing early accounts said Native Americans experienced with tobacco use. I can only imagine they were taking extremely large doses frequently enough that they had been pretty desensitized to it. I can't imagine what cancer rates must have been like!
Honestly, you might be right. The way that pre-Colombian societies used it was totally different than the methods Europeans adopted upon introduction. And this is kinda interesting because the native cultures had thousands of years of experience with this stuff, and Europeans, even now, have about 500. Now as for scientific rationalism being applied in those communities, nobody can really say, so an argument positing that they did some actuarial science over the subject in such a long trial may or may not be spurious, but the long-range experiment being conducted may well have yielded plain and visible results. Maybe there was a reason they hadn't adopted alternative methods.
"Everything from effigy pipes topped by exquisite animal carvings (used to smoke a variety of tobacco strong enough to induce trance-like states"
Graeber, via Goodman et. al - Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology
Evidently the Amerindians smoked high doses from pipes, enough to induce a trance-like state. Having made use of pre-rolled filtered Tobacco extensively, I'd surmise they were either using it infrequently, or making themselves use it infrequently. In the first case, they show enough self-restraint to forego daily use, which allowed them to remain sensitive to the drug. In the latter case, they frequently poisoned themselves by indulging in a very high level of consumption - I suspect this would discourage frequent use as the side effect tends to be nausea and sudden onset anxiety. Of course, my perspective on this is limited, as my exposure is largely (near-exclusively) that of commercially treated tobacco with its various additives and mode of transport - paper. They were smoking I imagine largely unprocessed tobacco out of pipes.
Altering the cultural fabric of smoking itself might actually yield better outcomes. I'm not so interested in the topic as to find statistical demonstrations, but I suspect at least a portion of the damage that smokers can be directly attributed to the physical characteristics of the smoke, and the frequency of use. Cooler smoke inhaled through a pipe constructed with a conductive material like ceramic or stone done for ritual purposes might well yield a better social outcome than what our current smoking modality does without infringing on human rights and wholly eschewing the use of tobacco and all of its cultural complement.
Nobody thinks smoking originated in the new world. Smoking TOBACCO originated in the new world, because at that time it was the only place tobacco grew.
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