Tobacco (botanically Nicotiana tabacum) is officially registered as a Traditional Thai Medicine, and is used in the most fascinating ways.
Snuff - a powdered herbal inhalant - has been common in Asia for hundreds of years and probably popularized into Thai culture via both the colonial English teak loggers along the Thai-Burmese border, and via the courts of the kings of the House of Chakri. One of snuff's primary ingredients? Finely powdered tobacco. In Thai, snuff is called Ya Nut. ยานัตถุ์
Thai snuff powder is basically composed of herb ingredients, including chewing tobacco, borneol, camphor, Dahurian Angelica root, Ligusticum sinensis, Angelica sinensis and red lime. It is sold in a small bottle. A U-shaped metal tube about 14cm long for inhaling the snuff is sold separately. Source
One loads up one end of the small u-shaped pipe with snuff powder and inserts into the nostril, and then blows hard into the other end, thereby blasting the snuff high up into the nasal cavity.
Anecdotally, snuff was used as a decongestant, and to calm the nerves. Commonly served after meals in very fine company, but equally used and made by peasant farmers. It was popularized in the reign of King Rama V (late 1800s). Khun Mee Kasemsuwan, better known as Moh Mee (literally means in English: 'the doctor who has'), launched his own snuff brand called Ya Nut Moh Mee in 1898. Moh Mee was once a civil servant handling medicine production in a state-run pharmaceutical house called Osot Sala.
The used of snuff became widespread amongst farmers and manual labourers for a different reason though: snuff is traditionally reputed to calm all manner of bodily aches and pains after a hard day in the rice fields or felling teak trees in the steep mountain jungles. Is there any truth to that? Actually, yes, there is. A clinical study in the 2013 Journal of Clinical Rheumatology showed clinically significant lower Disease Activity Scores for snuff users. Source.
Tobacco continues to be included in ritual gifts for the spirits - a traditional chud maak plu (ชุดหมากพลู) is a little banana leaf spirit offering box which contains buri bai thong (บุหรี่ใบตอง) - traditional Thai banana leaf cigarettes rolled in thin dried banana leaves - as well as the elements for betel chewing.
You can find these at any Thai fresh market, most any day.
The smoking of tobacco has been perhaps more common among the various mountain ethnic and indigenous tribal people.
These Akha women are using traditional bamboo pipes for the smoking of tobacco - something that's also widely seen among the Karen and the Hmong people. It's not common to see it photographed though, particularly with women. Smoking is seen as a private relaxation after a hard day in the fields. Although you WILL see Thai men smoking publicly, it's considered extremely rude for any women (white tourists included) to smoke in public. Although almost all the Thai grandmas I personally know can, and do, smoke privately, at home.
Large scale tobacco farming started in Thailand only in 1939.
What makes Thailand unique among commercial tobacco producing countries is that it easily grows all the three major types of tobacco - Virginia, Burley and Oriental – due to its vastly different microclimates. Virginia grows in the Upper North near Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, Burley thrives in the Lower North near Sukothai and Oriental flourishess in the drier North East close to Khon Kaen.Source
Tobacco, like cannabis, has really only become stigmatized in contemporary Thailand because Thai people have felt a certain pressure to follow western standards in their desire to develop.. What fascinates me is that as Thailand begins to reclaim, legalize, commercialize and celebrate its also rich cannabis healing culture, that development is being directed and shaped by the national body, The Thai Tobacco Monopoly.
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If I am crystal ball gazing commercially, I would hazard a guess that within 2-3 years Thailand will be producing - and exporting - healing cigarettes produced from organic Thai cannabis blended with organic Thai tobacco.
In closing, does smoking cause lung cancer? That's an interesting question to which the correct answer would be usually not. In fact, 85-90% of smokers DO NOT develop lung cancer. Source. While heavy, excessive or prolonged smoking DOES impact cardio-vascular health, it's a stretch to saySmoking kills. It's more accurate to say smoking hastens poor health outcomes for a group of dis-eases which are also triggered and fueled by lifestyle, diet and lack of exercise.
There is only ONE way that tobacco is a POISON and that's when it is ingested. DO NOT SWALLOW or ever attempt to make tinctures or teas from the tobacco plant!!!
I'm grateful for the traditional uses of healing plants and respectful of both their power to heal, and their power to harm when abused. Moderation and the Middle Path in all things. If your Being wants to smoke, please make it occasional, organic, hand-rolled and use either hemp paper or a yummy little dried banana leaf. 😊
BlissednBlessed.
This entry contributed for Natural Medicine's Smokin' Challenge - Tobacco as Poison or Medicine? @naturalmedicine/tobacco-poison-or-medicine-challenge
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