Anti-smoking legislation

Tobacco was introduced to Europe in 1493 when Columbus returned from his first voyage to the New World. Tobacco leaves and instruction in their use had been given to some of his crew by Tainos Indians on Hispaniola. Smoking and the use of tobacco gradually took hold although it was initially the preserve of the rich. Pipe-smoking was introduced to the UK in 1572 by Sir Francis Drake. By 1590, tobacco use was such a problem in mainland Europe that Pope Urban VII threatened to excommunicate anyone who ‘took tobacco in the porchway of, or inside, a church, whether by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose’. Ten years later, Samuel Rowlands wrote in Epigram 18 of ‘The Letting of Humours in the Head-Vaine’:

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