Tobacco

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Tobacco

Tobacco is the common name of the plant Nicotiana tabacum and to a limited extent Nicotiana rustica and the cured leaf that is used, usually after aging and processing in various ways for smoking, chewing, snuffing and the extraction of nicotine, the principal alkaloid of tobacco.(4) The species N. tabacum has never been found to grow in the wild.(1) The use of the word tobacco is generally accepted as referring to the products of the tabacum species and so it will be in what follows. Tobacco holds an unparalleled position among crop plants in the world such as:

1) It is one of the very few crops entering world trade entirely on a leaf basis.

2) It is the most widely grown commercial non-food plant in the world.

3) It holds a high importance in financial and economic policies in many countries.

4) Consumption is by way of smoking, inhaling or chewing and is a habit forming narcotic, and although bans of it's use have been attempted, it's consumption marches steadily forward.

5) Originally having religious significance, subsequent claims of medicinal benefit have alternated with accusations of a positive danger to health.

Tobacco is grown with assistance of man with the leaf as the only valuable part of the plant. Tobacco growth is restricted, by environmental factors, to about the latitudes of 60 degrees north to 45 degrees south, with the majority of the tobacco entering the world trade produced in the latitudes between 45 degrees north and 30 degrees south. Limits to it's growth are figured by the number of frost free days. Almost all continents are capable of growing tobacco but the United States, China, India and Brazil are the leading countries to grow tobacco. (1)

History

Natural occurre...

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...e making this money will not stop producing this product until its demand is nil. The tobacco plant has survived for a very long time and its use has been around for a long period of time. Tobacco plants will continue to be produced and processed for a long time to come. The use of tobacco shows how unintelligent man is because we keep using it even knowing its detrimental effects. The tobacco plant remains to this day one of the most important economic crops in the world.

References

1) Akehurst, B.C. Tobacco, Longmans, Green and Co., London. 1968 pages 2-11.

2) Fairholt, F.W. Tobacco: It's History and Associations, Chapman and Hall, Piccadilly, London. 1968, all pages.

3) Vogues, Ernst. Tobacco Encyclopedia, Tobacco Journal International, Federal Republic of Germany, 1984, all pages.

4) Britannica Online, Southern Illinois University, Morris Library.

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