Most cigarette tobacco is so laden with chemicals that it shouldn't even be considered tobacco anymore.
If you smoke commercial cigarettes, you are needlessly inhaling a multitude of pesticide-grade chemicals and even radioactive elements.
Surprisingly, the tobacco brand "American Spirit", which advertises it's products as "additive free" and "natural" has been treating their tobacco with ammonia and urea to increase the freebase nicotine content (and is being sued for it).
Whole leaf tobacco is much less expensive, running at about $20-$25 per pound. Compare that to the cost of a pack of cigarettes which contain approximately 20 grams or less of actual tobacco. Whole leaf tobacco is cheaper because it is sold in bulk and is taxed less because it is considered an "agriculture commodity" when in whole leaf form.
My favorite places to buy tobacco are:
Leaf Only
https://www.leafonly.com/
Leaf only has a wide variety of cigarette, cigar, hookah, chewing and pipe tobacco. They also have a few organic options if you want the best. I've tried many of their products, including all the organic varieties and highly recommend them.
Whole Leaf Tobacco
http://www.wholeleaftobacco.com/
This company has some high quality blends and also carries Latakia tobacco, an oriental style, fire cured leaf. Various aromatic woods are used to smoke the leaves. All it takes is a small pinch of Latakia to flavor a large amount of regular tobacco.
Both of these companies carry accessories such as cigarette rollers and packers as well as hand crank shredders like the one shown below.
If you are going to roll your own tobacco, a shredder is extremely useful. For some people, hand shredding each leaf with a pair of scissors can be a ritual of sorts, for those who take tobacco very seriously. It's worth the extra $40 for a shredder.
If you are interested in growing tobacco, check out my previous article on the subject:
https://steemit.com/tobacco/@ironwood/growing-tobacco-at-home
I hope you found this post informative and perhaps useful. If you like to smoke and don't plan on quitting, consider switching to pure, unadulterated tobacco for the best experience. As nature intended it to be.
