Books

RJR gambled against the trend of tasteless cigarettes, opting to load their new filter tip with tar and nicotine, so that even after the filter had done its work some taste and tar would remain intact. In deference, however, to the modern smoker’s less discriminating palates, they decided that quality of taste could be compromised, and that their new filter brand might make use of the 30 per cent or so of tobacco wasted in processing in the manufacture of normal cigarettes. After rigorous experiments with a coffee grinder and a pulp press, RJR came up with RST — Reconstituted Sheet Tobacco — which used all the stems, leaf ribs, tobacco scraps and dust which had hitherto been thrown away…

The introduction of RST marks a change in the cigarette manufacturers’ perception of their customers. Cigarettes, despite their origin as poor man’s tools, had nevertheless been a genuine tobacco habit. The paper skin that rendered their contents invisible was accepted by both manufacturer and consumer to be at most a necessary evil, but never a cloak of darkness beneath which secrets were concealed. Once manufacturers started treating their products as a package instead of a tobacco delivery system, and a package that had to look prettier or promise better health, wealth, or appearance than their competitors’ brands, they effectively abandoned the integrity of their product in favor of its appearance.

That’s from Iain Gately’s Tobacco, a fantastic cultural history on read on my long plane rides this week. Gately illustrates how today’s demonization of tobacco paints with far too broad a brush. Cigarettes are the most visible and deadly form of smoking, but they are to tobacco what mass market light lagers are to beer: convenient, fast, flavorless bastardizations of what the product can truly achieve. Cigarettes succeeded because they’re cheap, marketable, and quickly smoked, giving consumers the power (or curse) to keep up a steady nicotine fix. Pipe and cigar smoking are much older, much safer practices. The flavors they offer are much more developed. But because they take time and effort, they’re much less frequently enjoyed today than they used to be. Unfortunately, the same bans that throw cigarette smokers out of doors often thwart pipe and cigar smokers entirely. A bracing two minute cigarette break outside in the Boston winter is one thing, but an hour outdoors with a cigar? Not worth the frostbite.

Gately’s wide-ranging look at tobacco culture would enhance anyone’s appreciation for the plant while giving hope for the future; though today’s smoking bans appear draconian, they’re nothing next to the kingly proclamations and death sentences smoking used to elicit. These too shall pass, and hopefully with them quality tobacco’s current cultural insignificance.

Previously:
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