Tobacco Use and Tobacco Taxation

Adam Smith saw the economic world in which he lived as engaged in an ongoing process of creation and adaptation set in motion initially by the discovery of America and the ocean routes to Asia. ¹ In the centuries between Columbus and Smith, the lives of diverse sectors of the European population were touched and changed by the introduction of new botanical items from overseas. One of these, tobacco, was particularly well known in Smith’s world. He, of course, lived and worked in Glasgow, a major tobacco port. By his day the new leaf, however used, not only impinged on the daily routines, health and pocketbooks of millions, but had also confronted their governments with the ever pressing need to set policy priorities and arbitrate between the inharmonious interests of planters, merchants, manufacturers, tax farmers, state treasuries and consumers. To understand the differing ways in which these discordant demands were harmonized or at least mollified in different countries, we must keep in mind both the geography and the chronology of the tobacco question in the three centuries following Columbus’ voyages.