Between 1580 and 1610, Nicotiana tabacum, a species originally from the Amazon, became a fixture in every inhabited part of the earth. Almost immediately it attracted governmental ire. Bans on tobacco, some enforced by the death penalty, were enacted by France, Russia, Sweden, the Ottoman and Mughal empires, and the Japanese shogunate. The smoking weed quickly became so ubiquitous in Manchuria, according to historian Timothy Brook, that in 1635 the Khan, Hong Taiji, discovered that his soldiers "were selling their weapons to buy tobacco". Enraged, he prohibited smoking.
No anti-tobacco crusader is better known than King James I, whose Counterblaste to Tobacco, issued in 1604, proclaimed that smoking was "lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, [and] dangerous to the lungs". James sought to ban tobacco outright, but was rebuffed by a hostile Parliament. Pope Urban VIII was more successful. Infuriated by reports that priests were celebrating mass with lighted cigars, the Pope promptly – and successfully – prohibited smoking in the pulpit.
