You might think that governments have been a little illiberal on tobacco in recent years, but their illiberalism is nothing compared with the reaction of rulers centuries ago. In the first half of the seventeenth century, Snowdon writes, there were ‘draconian laws… to eliminate tobacco use from Sicily to China’. The czar of Russia flogged first offenders and had their nostrils slit; a second tobacco offence would result in execution. In China, the emperor Chongzhen ordered the beheading of tobacco importers. Shah Abbas of Persia punished both importers and users with death, while his son added the touch of executing them by pouring molten lead down their throats.
Yet there were many who also believed in tobacco’s medicinal qualities, and doctors prescribed it for a variety of illnesses from bronchitis to smallpox. The diarist Samuel Pepys apparently made sure he had a packet when the Great Plague hit London in the 1660s and it seems that tobacco was regarded as a vital protection in much the same way that Tamiflu is …
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