(sigh)
A sad but true statement.
However, my family arrived in 1623, just a bit shy of 400 years ago.
I CANNOT and WILLNOT kowtow to an artificial creation, because I know for a fact they did not endure what they did so my own government can control me.
Call me stubborn, call me foolish, but to allow the government that kind of power SPITS on the memory of their sacrifice...and that I will NOT do!
1600s Popes ban smoking in holy places.
1600 Sir Walter Raleigh persuades Queen Elizabeth to try smoking
1603 Physicians are upset that tobacco used by people without physician prescription. They complain to King James I.
1604 King James I of England, in his "counterblaste to Tobacco", said that smoking is a "custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless". He was the first to impose a heavy tax on tobacco.
1605 As a result of the King's protestations the Royal College of Physicians held a debate on smoking. Many members - pipes in hands - dismissed the King's views.
1610 Sir Francis Bacon writes that tobacco use is increasing and that it is a custom hard to quit.
1614 King Philip II of Spain establishes Seville as tobacco centre of the world. Seville becomes world centre for production of cigars. European cigarette use begins here as beggars patch together tobacco from used cigars and roll them in paper.
First sale of native Virginia tobacco in England. Virginia colony enters world tobacco market under English protection.
1620 Trade agreement between the Crown and Virginia Company bans commercial tobacco growing in England, in return for a 1 shilling/lb. duty on Virginia tobacco.