Tobacco smoking
Burning tobacco and inhaling the smoke
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and the absorption of the resulting smoke into one's body. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or released from the mouth, as is done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onward but embedded itself in certain strata of several societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus.
The public source identifies “Tobacco smoking” as burning tobacco and inhaling the smoke. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tobacco, smoking and Burning.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tobacco smoking” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.