In the Americas tobacco consumption had ceremonial significance as shown by this native American pipe-bowl. Credit: Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

The popularity of tobacco came to be controversial in the twentieth century. Even before smoking was associated with cancer it was considered unhealthy – the sale of tobacco to children was prohibited in Britain in 1908. After the Second World War new epidemiological evidence linked smoking and cancer. What had been a general habit for most male adults was more and more discouraged by doctors and the authorities. Giving up smoking came to be seen as a healthy – if often difficult – move.

Discussions about the safety of tobacco smoking have been pervaded by big business Credit:NRM/Science & Society Picture Library

While in 1964 the US Surgeon General described smoking as a habit rather than as an addiction, by 1988 the judgement was that dependence on nicotine was an ‘addiction’. Whether tobacco is addictive or merely a matter of reversible habit is a major legal issue settled in the courts in the United States as well as in the laboratory. However, there is increased clarity on how nicotine from tobacco acts on the brain. In the year 2000 the Royal College of Physicians published a report with the explicit title Nicotine Addiction in Britain.