Part Three

When Grandpa Tobacco was introduced to France he became popular with the likes of the diplomat, Jean Nicot, the Portuguese Ambassador to France.  He even sent it to Queen Catherine Medici as a recommendation to soothe headaches.  In his honour the tobacco plant (yes my Grandpa) was named ‘Nicotiana’ in Latin language, today you will know it as nicotine.  When the French smoked it they used the term cigarette, and this was where my life was to begin.
Grandpa Tobacco was becoming so popular, people couldn’t get enough of him, including those who wrote books about him saying how great he was, including a Spanish doctor Nicolas Mondares who wrote a book about the history of medicinal plants of the new world.  He said that my Grandpa Tobacco could cure 36 health problems.  Europeans believed it could cure almost anything from bad breath to cancer, oh how the tables have turned.
In the 1600’s Grandpa Tobacco was so popular he was often used instead of money to buy things.  However not everyone wanted to appreciate my family, including in 1603 James I of England who said it looked awful and was harmful to the brain and lungs, and Sir Francis Bacon who in 1610 tried telling people how hard it is to kick the habit.
Like with most things in life there was money to be made out of Grandpa Tobacco.  Tobacco was grown in Virginia and is regarded as Americas first Crop.  Until the American War of Independence, tobacco could only be sold to Britain, and these trade restrictions were one of the reasons for the war.  Also, not many people know this but before George Washington became the first President of America, he was a tobacco planter, (hmmmmmm, politics hey).  But it was John Rolfe in 1612 who had began the commercial cultivation,  that was to become the first and most important export of the English colonies, so in England it became a revenue raiser by adding tax, nothing changes does it!