Record #:

8563

Author(s):

Black, Tom

Abstract:

As early as 1499, Vespucci said he found natives chewing tobacco when he visited the Americas. Tobacco was a cash crop for early American settlers and the chaw, that pooch in a person's cheek while chewing, became a common sight. Sir Walter Raleigh and Ralph Lane helped open a market for tobacco in England and even though King James I tried to ban it, people still smoked it. Thomas Jefferson denounced tobacco as “infinite wretchedness” and wanted wheat to be the primary crop of the colonies. But tobacco was in high demand and too profitable to be second best. Chewing tobacco became popular in the working class as men could not work and smoke. The plug, a compressed rectangle of tobacco, was the main American tobacco product for years starting in the early1800s. Chewing tobacco lost sales after the Depression when smoking became synonymous with civilized lifestyle and chewing tobacco with farming. Chewing tobacco has seen better sales since the Depression and more than a third of the annual national tobacco crop in 1982 went into making it.

Source:

The State (NoCar F 251 S77), Vol. 50 Issue 4, Sept 1982, p16-17, il

Subject(s):

Smokeless tobacco