Cigarette

A cigarette is a thin cylinder of tobacco rolled in thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder, and the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opposite end. Cigarette smoking is the most common method of tobacco consumption. The term cigarette, refers to a tobacco cigarette, but the word is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette or a herbal cigarette. A cigarette is distinguished from a cigar by its usually smaller size, use of processed leaf, different smoking method, and paper wrapping, which is typically white.

There are significant negative health effects from smoking cigarettes such as cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, birth defects, and other health problems relating to nearly every organ of the body. Most modern cigarettes are filtered, however this does not make the smoke inhaled from them contain fewer carcinogens or harmful chemicals. Nicotine, the psychoactive drug in tobacco, makes cigarettes highly addictive. About half of cigarette smokers die of tobacco-related disease and lose on average 14 years of life. Every year, cigarette smoking causes more than 8 million deaths worldwide; more than 1.3 million of these are non-smokers dying as the result of exposure to secondhand smoke. These harmful effects have led to legislation that has prohibited smoking in many workplaces and public areas, regulated marketing and purchasing age of tobacco, and levied taxes to discourage cigarette use.

In the 21st century electronic cigarettes (also called e-cigarettes or vapes) were developed, whereby a substance contained within (typically a liquid solution containing nicotine) is vaporized by a battery-powered heating element as opposed to being burned. Such devices are commonly promoted by their manufacturers as safer alternatives to conventional cigarettes. Since e-cigarettes are a relatively new product, scientists do not have data on their possible long-term health effects, but there are significant health risks associated with their use.

The earliest forms of cigarettes were similar to their predecessor, the cigar. Cigarettes appear to have had antecedents in Mexico and Central America around the 9th century in the form of reeds and smoking tubes. The Maya, and later the Aztecs, smoked tobacco and other psychoactive drugs in religious rituals and frequently depicted priests and deities smoking on pottery and temple engravings. The cigarette and the cigar were the most common methods of smoking in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America until recent times.

The North American, Central American, and South American cigarette used various plant wrappers; when it was brought back to Spain, maize wrappers were introduced, and by the 17th century, fine paper. The resulting product was called papelate and is documented in Goya's paintings La Cometa, La Merienda en el Manzanares, and El juego de la pelota a pala (18th century).

By 1830 the cigarette had become known in France, where it received the name cigarette, and in 1845 the French state tobacco monopoly began manufacturing them. The French word made its way into English in the 1840s. Some American reformers promoted the spelling cigaret, but this was never widespread and is now largely abandoned.

The first patented cigarette-making machine was invented by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno of Mexico in 1847. In the 1850s, Turkish cigarette leaves had become popular. However, production climbed markedly when another cigarette-making machine was developed in the 1880s by James Albert Bonsack, which vastly increased the productivity of cigarette companies, which went from making about 40,000 hand-rolled cigarettes daily to around 4 million. At the time, these imported cigarettes from the United States had significant sales among British smokers.

In the English-speaking world, the use of tobacco in cigarette form became increasingly widespread during and after the Crimean War, when British soldiers began emulating their Ottoman Turkish comrades and Russian enemies, who had begun rolling and smoking tobacco in strips of old newspaper for lack of proper cigar-rolling leaf. This was helped by the development of tobaccos suitable for cigarette use, and by the development of the Egyptian cigarette export industry.