Although tobacco is widely associated, in the collective imagination, on the American continent, it soon became a product with planetary diffusion. Already in the colonial era, the Europeans contributed to its overseas marketing and to the creation of a flourishing industry stimulated by the strong growth of the demand of its derivative products (cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, just to name a few). With the passage of time, the emergence of new markets, especially among developing countries, has changed economic and tobacco policy geography while the discovery of its potential harmful effects on the health of individuals has made adoption imperfection in many more stringent legislation countries in order to protect public health.
The origins of the tobacco plant
There are 79 different species of plants that form the Nicotian genre, however there are only two (Nicotiana Tabacum And Nicotiana Rustica) to be used in the economy of “tobacco” as we mean it. The main difference between the two is the content of nicotine concentrated in the leaves, which in the case of Nicotiana Tabacum is between 1% and 3% while in the case of Nicotiana Rustica It even reaches 9%. This means that the first is by far the favorite on industrial-commercial level, however in some countries the cultivation of Nicotiana Rustica It is prevalent.
The peoples of the Americas have long used tobacco plants for a plurality of uses, from those for ceremonial-religious purposes to the role of exchange currency. It was the European colonizers who brought tobacco to Europe and from here it spread to the whole of the entire globe. Over the centuries, the cultivation of tobacco and the production of consumption assets derived from it as the famous cigarettes, but also the cigars, the pipe tobacco and so on has taken universal value because contrary to cotton or coffee, just to make two examples, the tobacco has proven to be very resilient both towards climate change and in environmental changes and this has allowed all countries (with all countries (with all countries (with all countries ( The exception of Bhutan) to create premises “Industries for the production of tobacco”.
Element that has greatly favored the diffusion of tobacco is its massive consumption in the most disparate forms, such as the widely used heated tobacco cigarettes in recent years, favored by the nicotine content which has a habitant effect for those who take it in modest quantities. Over time the consumption of tobacco (in particular of cigars) has created a real “culture” often associated with masculinity, as during the roaring years of Hollywood and of the youth contest.
The manufacturers in the world
According to the data published by FAO, the expansion of the world production of tobacco lived its golden age in the period between 1971 and 1997 when it grew by 40% going from 4.2 million tons of leaves produced in 1971 to 5.9 million tons of leaves produced in 1997, with a peak of 7.5 tons of leaves produced in 1992, a record that remains today unmatched. Interestingly, to a decrease in productivity recorded in developed countries, it contracted a very strong increase (+128%) in developing countries, and also in this case the “part of the lion” was touched by China whose world production of tobacco leaves went from 17% in 1971 to 47% in 1997.
As already mentioned before, the only country in the world in which there is no production, not even in minimal form, of tobacco is the Bhutan which, moreover, still applies even a very severe policy for the prohibition of marketing of any derivative of the processing of “raw material”. Excluding this necessary exception, if we consider all the other countries of the world, there is however a hierarchy that separates about ten large producers concentrated in six areas well located by the mass of all “others”. Also according to FAO data updated to 2022, these production areas are: China, the Indian subcontinent (India and Pakistan), southern America (Brazil and Argentine), Sudorientale Africa (Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique), Indonesia and the United States of America.
However, we must not fall into the temptation to believe that the large multinationals in the sector are gaining us from this huge business. During the aforementioned world peak period of production, the tobacco guaranteed the sustenance of over 20 million small Chinese farmers and related families who worked an extension of about 850,000 hectares of cultivable surfaces. The same goes for India, which in the early 2000s had just under 100,000 “official” farmers (not to mention unregistered ones) which cultivated an area of 0.25% of the fertile portion of the national territory. A particularly interesting case is then the Lebanese one. In fact, although the Lebanon only occupies the thirty -fifth place in the international ranking of tobacco production, its cultivation occupies a prominent place in the material life of the poorest strata of the population, as well as being absolutely transversal compared to all religious confessions, also going to affect positively on the budgets of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.
The use of tobacco and health risks
Inevitably, however, the speech of the “tobacco geopolitics” cannot be tackled without mentioning also to the risk that tobacco represents for health in addition to disputes relating to the methods of cultivation and processing of the product. Thanks to the research carried out in the medical field since the 1970s, we know that there is a direct correlation between the consumption of products deriving from the cultivation of tobacco and the development of potentially fatal diseases such as tumors and cancer. Much less known at the general public, however, it is the epidemiological incidence at macro level.
According to a report published in 2022 by the World Health Organization (WHO), 8 million people on a global level die for causes related to the use of tobacco every year (this figure includes 1.3 million victims due to “passive smoke”) and that in the course of the twentieth century the tobacco caused the death of at least 100 million people. Considering that, currently, about 1.1 billion people regularly use products deriving from tobacco and that the consumption of these products is growing highly growing especially in developing countries, where health systems are notoriously weaker, it is understood that the destructive potential is really high enough to push the WHO to declare tobacco as: “The most important single of human health risk factor in developed countries and an important cause of death worldwide premature “.
Other disputes about tobacco are recorded on the front of its cultivation. Although growing tobacco plants is not particularly expensive neither from the point of view of the territorial extensions nor the quantities of water required, it nevertheless requires the contemporary use of no less than 16 different types of pesticides many of which are potentially very dangerous for the environment and for human health itself. Another sore note concerns the issue of “child work”. The International Labor Office has repeatedly pointed its finger at China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, guilty of making wide use of child labor in tobacco crops. Lastly, holding the questionable primacy of “more contrabied legal product in the world”, tobacco contributes, among others, to swelling the pockets of terrorist organizations and great international crime.
Considering all this, is it spontaneous to ask: why have the governments of the world have not yet come to approve a generalized call for the products deriving from tobacco? In reality, the answer is very simple and has nothing to do with the free choice of individuals but with the old Adagio: “money-sold-hils”. The tobacco trade in most of the countries of the world is in fact subjected to the control of state monopolies on tobacco and this guarantees the coffers of the countries of the important annuities of which it is very difficult to do without.
