CIGARETTE

Cigarette

Main article: Cigarette

The cigarette is the most common method of smoking tobacco.

Various smoking equipment including different pipes.

Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco consumption. Because of the curing process, the smoke is relatively mild, unlike cigar, roll-your-own or pipe tobacco. Cigarettes also contain a number of additives, particularly to enhance taste. Cigarettes are smoked by some with a cigarette holder. (See also Beedi).

Roll-Your-Own

Main article: Roll-Your-Own

Roll-Your-Owns, often called rollies or roll ups, are very popular, particularly in European countries; these are prepared from loose tobacco, cigarette papers and filters all bought separately. They are usually much cheaper to make.

Cigar

Main article: Cigar

A cigar is generally puffed, not inhaled. Cigars come in many shapes and sizes, the most common being the "Corona", "Cigarillo", and "Robusto". The tobacco used is grown throughout the Caribbean in places such as the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, and Cuba, but also in countries in other regions such as the Philippines, Brazil and Indonesia. Cigars generally come available in 2 categories in reference to color, "Natural" and "Maduro". "Natural" shades are ones that do not undergo a further fermenting process, unlike "Maduro" which in its construction involves a further fermenting process to darken and strengthen (in taste) the leaf.

Pipe

Main article: Smoking pipe (tobacco)

A pipe for smoking typically consists of a small chamber (bowl) for combustion of the substance to be smoked and a thin stem (shank) that ends in a mouthpiece (also called a bit). Pipes are made from a variety of materials (some obscure): briar, corncob, meerschaum, clay, wood, glass, gourd, bamboo, and various other materials, such as metal. Tobacco used for smoking pipes is often chemically treated to change smell and taste not available in other commercial tobacco products.

Many of the commercial tobacco produced for pipe use are mixtures using staple ingredients of variously cured Burley and Virginia tobaccos which are mixed with tobaccos from different areas, such as Oriental or Balkan locations. Latakia (a fire-cured tobacco of Cypriot or Syrian origin), Perique (only grown in St. James Parish, Louisiana) or combinations of Virginia and Burley tobaccos of African, Indian, or South American origins. Traditionally, many U.S. tobaccos are made of American Burley with artificial sweeteners and flavorings added to create an artificial "aromatic" smell, whereas "English" blends are based on natural Virginia tobaccos enhanced with Oriental and other natural tobaccos. There is a growing tendency towards "natural" tobaccos which derive their aromas from blending with spice tobaccos alone and historically-based curing processes.

Pipes can range from the simple machine-made briar pipe to handmade and artful implements created by pipe-makers which can be expensive collectors' items. The popularity of pipe smoking in Western countries has declined in recent years under the onslaught of cigarette advertising. However, it has also enjoyed a resurgence of late among younger and middle aged smokers who find its contemplative nature and age-transcendent status as "hobby not habit" to be both thoroughly enjoyable and stress-relieving.

Hookah

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Main article: Hookah

A hookah (or sheesha) is a type of traditional Middle Eastern and South Asian water pipe, which operates by water-filtration and indirect heat which might reduce the amount of actual combusted plant material inhaled^{[citation needed]}. Hookahs are most popular in the Middle East, but form a niche market in many other places. In other contexts, hookahs are used to smoke cannabis, hashish or opium.

Typically, tobacco is smoked from a hookah by placing richly flavored tobaccos in the smoking bowl, covering it with foil, and placing a coal on top of the foil. This keeps the tobacco from burning, and allows it to bake. The resulting vapors are further cooled by the hookah water and filtered by a bubbling action in the basin of the hookah, resulting in a moist, warm light smoke. The Al-Waha, Al Fakher, and Nakhla tobacco companies compete for market share in the Middle East by producing flavored tobaccos for use in the hookah. Some flavors include the traditional apple, grape, double apple, orange, strawberry, cherry, mango, vanilla, and melon flavors; as well as more modern flavors of cola, coconut, cappuccino, and banana milk.

Health effects

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Main article: Health effects of tobacco

Establishing a link between smoking and health effects

As the use of tobacco became popular in Europe, a number of people became concerned about its negative effects. One of the first was King James I of Great Britain. In his 1604 treatise, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, King James observed that smoking was:

A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

The late-19th century invention of automated cigarette-making machinery in the American South made possible mass production of cigarettes at low cost, and cigarettes became elegant and fashionable among society men as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian. In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking.^[7] In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published a formal statistical evidence of a lung cancer–tobacco link, based on a study showing that lung cancer sufferers were likely to be smokers.^[8] Lickint also argued that tobacco use was the best way to explain the fact that lung cancer struck men four or five times more often than women (since women smoked much less).^[8]

Prior to World War I, lung cancer was considered to be a rare disease, which most physicians would never see during their career.^[9][10] With the postwar rise in popularity of cigarette smoking, however, came a virtual epidemic of lung cancer.

In 1950, Richard Doll published research in the British Medical Journal showing a close link between smoking and lung cancer.^[11] Four years later, in 1954 the British Doctors Study, a study of some 40 thousand doctors over 20 years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related.^[12] The British Doctors Study lasted till 2001, with result published every ten years and final results published in 2004 by Doll and Richard Peto. ^[13] Much early research was also done by Dr. Ochsner. Reader's Digest magazine for many years published frequent anti-smoking articles. In 1964 the United States Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health (referenced below), led millions of American smokers to quit, the banning of certain advertising, and the requirement of warning labels on tobacco products.