TODAY is World No Tobacco Day, which has been celebrated on May 31 every year since it was created by the World Health Organisation in 1988.
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/top10facts/675324/Top-10-facts-about-tobacco
- The word tobacco comes from a Caribbean language but it is unclear whether it meant a tube of tobacco leaves or the pipe they were smoked in.
- The island of Tobago was once called tavaco or tobaco, possibly for its cigar-like shape.
- The annual tax revenue from tobacco in the UK is more than £12 billion
- Around a third of the world’s adult population are smokers.
- It was been calculated that every cigarette a person smokes reduces their expected life span by 11 minutes.
- Worldwide, 15 billion cigarettes are smoked every day.
- In 1604 King James VI wrote A Counterblaste To Tobacco, attacking the practice of smoking.
- He described it as a “Custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs.”
- In 1665 pipe-smoking was compulsory among pupils at Eton as a defence against the plague.
- Rodrigo de Jerez, a crewman of Columbus, was the first known European smoker. He was thrown in jail for it as exhaling smoke was seen as satanic.