Tobacco Use and Ethnicity

Peter Myers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317993353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Learn how ethnic factors affect tobacco use The addiction to smoking is remarkably resistant to intervention, bringing with it a multitude of health issues among users that can at times co-occur with psychiatric disorders. Ethnicity is increasingly recognized as often playing an important role in the prevalence of tobacco use. Tobacco Use and Ethnicity explores the various factors that impact tobacco use among ethnic groups and provides practical, culturally competent approaches to treatment. Chapters consider multiple variables that lead to use among certain groups, such as Asian American and Pacific Island youth, American Indian and Alaskan Native youth, and low-income African Americans. Tobacco Use and Ethnicity is a unique source that comprehensively reveals the intersection between nicotine and culture, constructing culturally informed and culturally competent approaches to tobacco prevention and cessation treatment. This volume is based on first-hand participant observation and addresses risk and protective factors in a wide variety of populations served by public health workers and educators. The book is extensively referenced and includes figures and tables to clearly present research. Topics discussed in Tobacco Use and Ethnicity include:

• target marketing of a tobacco product to African-American youth
• how ethnicity and youth culture impact potential smokers
• the role of parental relationships
• the impact of peer and parental smoking status, employment, gender, and income in British Columbia
• the risk factor of acculturative stress on Asian American and Pacific Island youth
• protective factors of American Indian and Alaskan Native youth
• common factors associated between poverty and African American tobacco use
• and more!

Tobacco Use and Ethnicity is an invaluable resource for public health professionals, addictions counselors, public health educators, and students.

A Cross-Cultural and Historical Survey of Tobacco Use Among Various Ethnic Groups

Victor B. Stolberg, MA, EdM, MAS

SUMMARY. This review of tobacco use in diverse historical and cultural contexts reveals a range of behaviors engaged in and perspectives held by members of respective ethnic groups, such as whether to consider tobacco as a medicine or as a problem. After its introduction to Western societies, many attributed tobacco with an array of medicinal uses, while condemning recreational use and identifying it as immoral. Tobacco has been used variously by respective ethnic groups at different times and places and these customs have flavored understandings of the relationships between tobacco and the body. Considerable ethnic variation exists not only in terms of tobacco use and abuse, but also with respect to pharmacogenetic factors that influences the consequences of tobacco exposure. There have also been different societal responses to the use of tobacco, including those related to the media, as well as to issues of treatment and prevention. doi:10.1300/J233v06n03_02 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www. HaworthPress.com> © 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. History, cross-cultural, tobacco, cigarettes, smoking, media, treatment, prevention

Introduction

Examining ethnicity is essential to gaining a better understanding of tobacco use and abuse (e.g., Unger, Cruz, Baezconde-Garbanati, Shakib, Palmer, Johnson, Shields, Cruz, Mock, Edsall, Glynn, & Gritz, 2003). This, of course, should include due consideration of both historical and cross-cultural variation within these phenomena, particularly with respect to how they intersect with concerns of medicine, health and the body. Tobacco use has understatedly long been a controversial subject. The use of tobacco has been regarded variously as a panacea, an economic salvation, and as a vice (Dickson, 1954). In examining the history of tobacco it is not always easy to distinguish between fact and fiction. In this regard, as Mark Twain opened his essay “Concerning Tobacco” he noted: “As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions” (Twain, 1917: 275). This discussion will explore many of these superstitions, along with some of what is known regarding the use of tobacco, both historically and cross-culturally.

Historical Background

As Christopher Columbus and his men set foot in the New World in October of 1492 they were met by Arawaks who offered them gifts, including their much valued dried leaves of tobacco (Mackenzie, 1958: 63). Subsequently, also on his first voyage to the New World, Columbus visited Cuba, where he sent two of his men inland, who upon returning reported, as he recorded in his log entry on November 6th, that the inhabitants were “carrying firebrands in their hands and herbs to smoke, which they are in a habit of doing” (Columbus, 1492-1493/1989: 104). Some of his men may even have acquired this habit of tobacco use, specifically the smoking of cigars. In fact, when Rodrigo de Jerez, a member of Columbus’ expedition, returned home to Spain and smoked cigars in public there was such alarm that he was imprisoned by the Inquisition (Tate, 1989: 108).

In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sailors returning to Europe from voyages to the New World brought back tobacco, tobacco seeds, tobacco customs, and tobacco lore. Tobacco was rapidly spread around the world. By the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese introduced tobacco to the west coast of Africa, to India, and elsewhere; they introduced it to Ceylon as a cure for beri-beri (Mackenzie, 1958: 121-122). Around 1600 in China, tobacco was touted as a medicine for cholera, colds, and malaria (Hirschfelder, 1999: 64). Tobacco was initially cultivated in Europe as an ornamental plant, and also for its purported medicinal powers. The medical understanding of the human body during the sixteenth century was based on the earlier theories of Galen that the body was controlled by the four humors which had to be kept in balance. Tobacco was regarded by some as being hot and dry and thus useful for controlling excess phlegm, one of the humors from the body.

Soon after its introduction, Spanish authorities were promoting the medicinal effects of tobacco. Nicolas Monardes, a Spanish physician, claimed that tobacco was hot and dry and could “bind wounds, counteract poison, dissolve stomach obstructions and kidney stones, treat inflammation or swelling, kill worms, fight pain in the joints, and cure headaches, toothaches, and bad breath” (Swendlow, 2000: 119). Monardes’ work on New World plants, prominently including tobacco, was translated into English in 1596 by John Frampton. On the title page of this book, it was declared that these plants had the “use of Phisicke, as of Chirurgery: which being well applyed, bring such present remedie for all diseases” (Monardes, 1596). Francisco Hernandez, a Spanish physician and expert on plants of the New World, also identified tobacco as hot and dry and that it could, by taking its smoke through the mouth, cause patients to cough up phlegm, an important feature of Galenic medicine (Swendlow, 2000: 119). Giovanni Verazzano, in a letter of 1523 to Francis I of France, noted the medicinal qualities of tobacco and tobacco smoke (Curtis, 1935: 31). In the 1570s, another Spanish physician, Juan de Cardenas, claimed that the ailments tobacco could cure were infinite (Swendlow, 2000: 119). By the mid-to-late 1500s, Europeans were using tobacco as a treatment for syphilis (Swendlow, 2000: 87) and other assorted diseases; this was probably related to its pain-killing properties.

Jean Nicot, a French ambassador to the court of Portugal, learned about the purported curative properties of tobacco. Returning to France in 1560, he used tobacco to treat the migraine headaches of Catherine de Medici, who adopted the use of snuff, which she preferred to smoking, feeling that it worked against her headaches; this practice was imitated by the members of the French court (Frieda, 2006: 311). French royalty were soon asserting that tobacco was effective in treating asthma and other diseases (Swendlow, 2000: 119). In 1574, Nicolo Tornabuonui, a Tuscan ambassador to France, sent some tobacco to Italy as a cure for a sick relative in Florence (Mackenzie, 1958: 75).

Spanish and Portuguese sailors adopted and transformed the North American calumet into the pipe, which they introduced into the Low Countries of Holland and Flanders and it spread during the end of the sixteenth century to England and Germany; when the campaigns of Louis XIV brought French soldiers into pipe smoking lands, they acquired the habit and brought it back to France (Herment, 1957: 2). Similarly, during the early seventeenth century in Holland, tobacco smoking evolved from being regarded as a social vice of outcasts to an accepted pastime across all social classes; it has been suggested that this shift was the result of young males modeling the smoking behavior of soldiers and civic guards, who served as masculine role models (Roberts, 2006). The use of snuff also became fashionable in France during the reign (1643-1715) of Louis XIV (Quiram, Siegel, & Jacobs, 1997: 12). Dry nasal snuff is one of the oldest types of tobacco products known in Europe (Rogozinski, 1990; Sapundzhiev & Werner, 2003).

Explorers reported that in parts of South America some shamans would become intoxicated with tobacco smoke as a method to achieve visions (Wilbert, 1987: 11). Other techniques were used to accomplish the same ends, for instance, shamans among the Warao and the Tunebo were known to chew tobacco (Wilbert, 1987: 19-27), while in Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana a tobacco juice made of an infusion of tobacco leaves and water was common (Wilbert, 1987: 29). In Western society, tobacco was initially used mainly as snuff, chewing tobacco, and pipe tobacco.

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh sent his first expedition to North America; it sailed up along the coast from Florida and took possession of Roanoke Island and other lands in what is now North Carolina; thence the eastern coast of North America became known as Virginia in tribute to Queen Elizabeth I (Mackenzie, 1958: 79). Raleigh sent a second expedition in 1585 with the intent of establishing a colony; the expedition was under the command of Sir Richard Grenville and Thomas Hariot, Raleigh’s mathematical tutor, was sent as surveyor (Mackenzie, 1958: 80). Hariot may have been the one to introduce pipe smoking to Raleigh; at any rate, Raleigh’s use of tobacco did much to popularize the custom, both in Britain and beyond (Mackenzie, 1958: 83).

During the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries public debate contested the therapeutic and social uses of tobacco. In 1588, Thomas Hariot, while describing products of the New World, cited the health benefits of tobacco in that: “It openeth all the pores and passages of the body” (Hariot, 1588/1931: 63). Hot tobacco enemas, for instance, became fashionable in Europe as part of the raging medical battles between theoretical advocates of the consumption of hot and cold substances for the body (Camporesi, 1994: 118). Although tobacco was introduced into Elizabethan Britain as part of the pharmacopeia its non-medical use was not widely condoned. Efforts to restrict the social use of tobacco included price controls, antismoking propaganda, and associated measures to control its production and availability (Harrison, 1986). In 1600, Dr. William Vaughan published Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health, which included advice on avoiding the use of tobacco based on the then current medical theory of the four humors (Charlton, 2005a). Around 1602, an Elizabethan physician, who called himself Philaretes, wrote a tract entitled Work for Chimny-Sweepers or A Warning for Tabacconists, which was one of the earliest works to discuss many of the specific health risks of tobacco (Charlton, 2005b). This work suggested that smoking attacked the humors of the body. On the other side, advocates for tobacco continued to assert its purported health benefits, such as claims by Roger Marbecke in his 1602 A Defence of Tabacco . . . that “It is good for scurvy, for weake cold stomakes . . . for grosse and soggy bodies . . . ” (Marbecke, 1602).

King James I of England entered this ongoing debate with his “counter-blaste” pamphlet in which he refuted the popular assumption, based on humoral theory, that taking in something hot and dry, specifically tobacco smoke, was beneficial to health, since the brain, according to James I, was naturally cold and wet. King James I, in addressing the readers of his “Body-politicke,” declared: “And surely in my opinion, there cannot be a more base, and yet hurtfull corruption in a Countrey, then is vile vse (or other abuse) of taking Tobacco...”(James I, 1604/1884: 1). At least part of James I’s dislike of tobacco was apparently due to the fact that its origins were in the New World, which was principally owned by Spain, England’s fierce foe (Knapp, 1988: 27). At any rate, the economic potential of tobacco could not be ignored. In fact, the Virginia Company was organized under James I to control the trade in tobacco from America (Adams, 1938: 225). The British were, in fact, very eager to compete with the highly profitable Spanish tobacco trade; this position was stated, for example, around 1620 by Edward Bennett in his A treatise divided into three parts, touching the inconveniences, that the Importation of Tobacco out of Spain, hath brought into this land, in which he concluded that Britain should: “Shut the gates of entrance of Tobacco, and you open the gate for the entry of Treasure . . .” (Bennett, c. 1620). This was clearly intended to counter the trade imbalance Britain was experiencing resulting from commerce in tobacco.

Debates, however, on the medicinal properties of tobacco continued for some time. Seventeenth century medical authorities recommended that tobacco smoking would protect against the plague (Durant & Durant, 1963: 275); thus, smoking spread widely during the Great Plague of 1665; in fact, during the plague, schoolboys at Eton in England were whipped if they avoided their daily smoke (Anon., 2003a: 601). In 1675, John Josselyn published a chronicle of two trips he made to America, in this work he lavished praise on the medicinal uses of tobacco:

The virtues of tobacco are these, it helps digestion, the Gout, the Tooth-Ach, prevents infection by scents, it heats the cold, and cools them that sweat, feedeth the hungry, spent spirits restoreth, purgeth the stomach, killeth nits and lice; the juice of the green leaf healeth green wounds, although poysoned; the Syrup for many diseases, the smoak for the Phthisick, cough of the lungs, distillation of Rheuma, and all diseases of a cold and moist cause, good for all bodies cold and moist taken upon an emptie sto...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ABOUT THE EDITOR
• Introduction to "Tobacco and Ethnicity"
• A Cross-Cultural and Historical Survey of Tobacco Use Among Various Ethnic Groups
• Black 'N Mild and Carcinogenic: Cigar Smoking Among Inner City Young Adults in Hartford, CT
• Toward an Explanation of Observed Ethnic Differences in Youths' Tobacco Use
• Tobacco Use and Dependence in Asian American and Pacific Islander Adolescents: A Review of the Literature
• Regular Tobacco Use Among American Indian and Alaska Native Adolescents: An Examination of Protective Mechanisms
• Association Between Tobacco Use and Lifestyle in a Sample of Lower Income Urban African-Americans in the American South
• Smoking Susceptibility and Attitudes Towards Smoking Among Chinese and Vietnamese Adolescents
• Index