Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Bertrand Russell on Smoking

Bertrand Russell interview: "I owe my life to smoking." 

Tobacco in China (book)

Carol A. Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (University of California Press, forthcoming 2011).

Canada's (mostly Mohawk) underground tobacco industry

The first in a five-part series is available at http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/09/18/post-preview-inside-canadas-underground-tobacco-industry-a-five-part-series/

Tobacco in Russian history (book)

Matthew P. Romaniello and Tricia Starks, Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (London: Routledge, 2009).

History and culture of smoking (book)

Chris Harrald and Fletcher Watkins, The Cigarette Book: The History and Culture of Smoking (Skyhorse, 2010).  Pro-tobacco.

Third World poor (alcohol and tobacco)

A New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof complaining about spending on alcohol and tobacco by Third World men has brought some angry replies. 60% of men and women in Haiti abstain from alcohol as compared with 30% in the USA. The per capita consumption of alcohol in the  Congo is 2.6 liters, for sub-Sahran Africa as a whole 4.5 liters, and for the USA 8.6 liters.

Alcohol, tobacco and the world's poor

A New York Times columnist complains that the world's poor could spend more on schooling and health if the male head of household did not spend so much on alcohol and tobacco (and prostitutes, celebrations, and even cellphones).  Having no money, rarely means no money for booze and cigarettes.  For more, see here.

Publications on tobacco smoking (article)

There are six paragraphs of the history of tobacco in the late Judith Douville, "Tobacco Smoking: A Multidisciplinary Review of Literature," Choice, vol. 47, no. 10, June 2010.

A History of Tobacco

at a website developed by Gene Borio - http://www.tobacco.org/resources/history/

Historians testifying for Big Tobacco

Here is a link to the HNN blog Cliopatria where Ralph E. Luker assembles material about historians who testified on behalf of tobacco companies in health law suits.  One of the most famous of the historians later died of lung cancer.  The blog includes a link to Jon Wiener, "Big Tobacco and the Historians," Nation, Feb. 25, 2010, that interviews historians who testified on the other side at considerable cost to themselves.