Smoking one more cigarette may mean one more person won't have a meal

Tobacco not only affects people's physical health, but also damages the environment and threatens food security.

You can't grow food if you grow tobacco

Compared with other food and cash crops, tobacco crops need to absorb more nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which will quickly drain the soil's fertility . In order to maintain fertility and continue to grow tobacco, a large amount of fertilizers and pesticides must be used , leading to soil degradation. The chemicals contained in pesticides enter the water body and pollute lakes, rivers and drinking water. After planting tobacco, it is difficult for other plants to continue to grow on the land.

Tobacco cultivation also causes about 5% of deforestation . For every 300 cigarettes produced, a tree needs to be cut down. This not only leads to land desertification, but also exacerbates climate change. Every year, about 200,000 hectares of land are cleared for tobacco cultivation and drying and curing , equivalent to the area of ​​Nanjing.

Pictured: sun-dried tobacco leaves｜H. Zell / wikimedia

For tobacco growers, nearly a quarter of them suffer from nicotine poisoning and green tobacco sickness.

Tobacco cultivation does far more harm than good. It not only threatens the health of tobacco farmers and their families, but also damages a variety of resources such as water sources, forests, animals and plants, and affects long-term food security.

According to the World Health Organization, as many as 349 million people in 79 countries face severe food insecurity , many of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. In many of these countries, large tracts of fertile land are used to grow tobacco instead of food, using the foreign exchange earned from tobacco exports to import food. But this is an unsustainable process , and one day, the land will be so scarce that no crops can be grown.

Tobacco from the New World

In addition to its impact on land and agriculture, the most well-known harm of tobacco to humans is the health risk - tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, of which more than 7 million are due to direct tobacco use and about 1.2 million are non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke .

Tobacco is a threat to our lives. The genus Nicotiana contains more than 60 species of plants, native to the Americas, Australia, the South Pacific and southwestern Africa. The most widely used by humans are the American tobacco (N. tabacum) and the yellow tobacco (N. rustica).

Tobacco flowers are pink｜Orchi / wikimedia

Solanaceae plants generally contain nicotine, which is a self-protective alkaloid that is highly toxic to most insects. Nicotiana plants have a high nicotine content, which can excite the central nervous system in humans and is highly addictive.

The English name of tobacco, tabacco, comes from the Spanish word tabaco, and the words cigar and cigarette are said to be derived from the Mayan word "Sikar". However, there is another saying that in 1559, the Spanish chronicler Hernández de Boncalo brought tobacco back to Spain on the orders of King Philip II, which was the first time tobacco came to the Old World.

In 1565, Spain occupied Luzon (now the Philippines) and brought tobacco from the Americas. Coincidentally, the land in the Philippines is very suitable for growing tobacco .

Tobacco fruit｜H. Zell / wikimedia

Around the end of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty, merchants traveling between Luzon, Fujian, Taiwan and other places brought tobacco to China . At that time, according to the Spanish name of tobacco, people transliterated it as Danbagu, Danrouguo, Danbugui, etc. Some people also called it Jinsixun based on its shape.

Not long after tobacco was introduced into the country, smoking ban began.

The road to banning opium in the Ming and Qing dynasties

The tobacco boom in the late Chongzhen period brought high profits to tobacco farmers, and tobacco cultivation was further expanded, but it also seriously affected the output of major crops and cash crops . At that time, wars were frequent in the north and the Central Plains, and a large amount of military pay was needed. Therefore, in the 16th year of Chongzhen (1643), tobacco was banned and private tobacco growers were sentenced to prison .

However, this punishment was too light compared to the profits from tobacco, and tobacco farmers in the south did not intend to carry it out. In a rage, Chongzhen changed the prison sentence to death . The tobacco farmers were obedient, but most of the soldiers fighting against the Later Jin in Liaodong were already addicted. They protested that smoking could "cure colds" and how could they fight without cigarettes. Therefore, Chongzhen's anti-smoking campaign failed.

Scenes of Ming Dynasty people drying tobacco leaves｜eastday.com

Like Chongzhen, the Later Jin government and the early Qing government also encountered the situation where the ban on smoking could not be implemented. Huang Taiji enacted laws against smoking and tobacco planting, but tobacco was so popular that smoking became an irreversible social trend for everyone from the kings and ministers to the poor . The implementation of the tobacco ban could only be turned a blind eye.

The emperor's attitude also influenced a group of heavy smokers in the Forbidden City. During the Kangxi period, ministers did not dare to smoke in the palace, and even outside they had to smoke secretly. During the Yongzheng period, smoking was not strictly prohibited, and persuasion was often used. It was common to see ministers, guards, eunuchs, etc. smoking unscrupulously inside and outside the Qianqing Gate, but no one stopped them.

Qing Dynasty copper tobacco bottle｜liveauctioneers.com

In the second year of Emperor Qianlong's reign, a large-scale debate was held in the court over banning tobacco and alcohol. One faction considered the national economy and believed that tobacco cultivation occupied arable land, wasted manpower, and hindered normal agricultural production , and strongly demanded a ban on tobacco; the other faction believed that a ban on tobacco would lead to bankruptcy of the people, and then to breaking the law , which would destabilize the people. This debate was naturally one-sided, with "seven out of ten people saying that it should not be banned." Emperor Qianlong himself did not express his position, only saying "I will make my own judgment."

In the fourth year of Jiaqing (1799), someone submitted a memorial advocating a strict ban on smoking, and that fields used to grow tobacco should be replaced with fields planted with grains, with offenders punished . As a result, he was first refuted by the Grand Council, and then scolded by Jiaqing, who said that he was talking nonsense about state affairs, wanted to change the old rules, and used harsh laws to suppress the people. In the end, this person was handed over to the Ministry of Justice and sent back to his hometown. After this case, the court's attitude towards tobacco was determined, and no one dared to publicly express their attitude towards banning smoking. As for after Jiaqing, opium became popular, and no one cared about the tobacco issue anymore .

The Putuo Zongcheng Temple in Chengde, Hebei, was originally built by Emperor Qianlong to celebrate his 60th birthday and the Empress Dowager's 80th birthday. A fire broke out in the 36th year of Emperor Qianlong's reign (1771), which was later found to be caused by the craftsmen smoking｜Gisling / wikimedia

No fireworks allowed

In fact, many people are not averse to tobacco because of issues such as the national economy or people's livelihood, but they naturally hate its smell and the harm it causes to the body .

"Tobacco Spectrum" records a man named Wang Youtang who never smoked in his entire life. He said, "Orchid is the most fragrant, but when there is tobacco, the orchid does not smell, which means its fragrance is taken away; feces and urine are the most stinky, but when there is tobacco, feces and urine do not smell, which means they stink worse than feces and urine. Why should I store that stinky weed in my clean intestines?" His curse was very rough, but it contained profound philosophy.

A tobacco station is grading tobacco leaves｜Yunnan Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Bureau

Some people say that smoking is freedom and power, but this freedom comes at the cost of hurting others . Because of the existence of secondhand smoke and thirdhand smoke, no smoker in this world is innocent, unless he enters a completely sealed room every time he smokes, takes a thorough shower and washes his hair after smoking, and changes all his clothes, so as to minimize the harm to others.

Some people say that today's cigarettes are not as "powerful" as before. But in fact, low-tar cigarettes are not safer . Their theoretical tar values ​​cannot reflect the actual situation of smokers inhaling harmful substances. No matter what process low-tar cigarettes are based on, they are just a marketing strategy to mislead consumers . If you want to completely stop the harm of tobacco to yourself and those around you, you have to quit smoking completely.

Smoking is not only harmful to your health | Tuchong Creative

Tobacco has been around for more than 500 years. I wonder if humans can control this demon and truly realize “no tobacco allowed” in the next 500 years.

Author: Frost Moth, Little Towel

Editor: Calendar Girl

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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