1 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,360 This is the River Clyde in Glasgow. 2 00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:16,520 250 years ago, this was one of Britain's great trading centres. 3 00:00:16,520 --> 00:00:18,840 It was the hub of a huge empire 4 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:22,480 that stretched from the Caribbean to China... 5 00:00:24,360 --> 00:00:26,360 ..an empire founded on trade, 6 00:00:26,360 --> 00:00:30,080 in which simple plants were transformed by human labour 7 00:00:30,080 --> 00:00:33,440 to become hugely profitable global commodities. 8 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:40,360 The trade in sugar... 9 00:00:40,360 --> 00:00:41,560 tobacco... 10 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:45,440 ..opium... 11 00:00:45,440 --> 00:00:47,120 and whisky 12 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:51,200 transformed our society, our bodies, and our minds. 13 00:00:54,080 --> 00:00:56,720 Over the centuries, we've learned to love these products - 14 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:00,120 their smell, their taste, the effect they've had on us. 15 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:02,920 They've become increasingly guilty pleasures... 16 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:06,600 ..which are still with us, still part of us. 17 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:13,680 Today, millions of us can't do without at least some of them. 18 00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:17,280 So how did we become so hooked? 19 00:01:19,640 --> 00:01:23,040 'The answer will take me on a journey across the world...' 20 00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:26,000 Oh, my God! That's powerful. 21 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:29,040 '..and inside our minds and bodies too...' 22 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:30,160 Bye! 23 00:01:33,240 --> 00:01:35,080 HE LAUGHS 24 00:01:35,080 --> 00:01:36,800 Gosh, that's good, isn't it?! 25 00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:41,200 '..in the pursuit of pleasure.' 26 00:01:51,360 --> 00:01:55,840 My name is Brian Cox and I am not a smoker, 27 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:59,440 which is something of a miracle, 28 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:01,280 considering when I was growing up 29 00:02:01,280 --> 00:02:03,720 in this very close on the streets of Dundee, 30 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,200 when I was a teenager, I was surrounded by tobacco. 31 00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:07,680 It was everywhere, 32 00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:10,840 it was after me, and in those days, everyone seemed to smoke, 33 00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:13,520 my own family, my own close relationships. 34 00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:17,040 We were like some kind of tobacco test-bed, 35 00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:19,680 some sort of industrial demonstration 36 00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:22,920 of all the different ways in which tobacco could be consumed. 37 00:02:22,920 --> 00:02:25,960 I mean, I had relatives who smoked cigarettes, who smoked pipes, 38 00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:28,880 who chewed tobacco and snorted snuff. 39 00:02:28,880 --> 00:02:30,680 I mean, it went everywhere. 40 00:02:30,680 --> 00:02:33,000 I mean, the bus... In the bus, it stank of smoke. 41 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:35,880 I mean, I could smell it, smell it all over my clothes... 42 00:02:35,880 --> 00:02:38,560 Everywhere, particularly on the top floor of the buses, 43 00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:41,200 which is where every kid wanted to sit. 44 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:44,000 And if I went to the local cinema, I mean, everybody smoked - 45 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:46,880 off-screen, of course, in the audience, 46 00:02:46,880 --> 00:02:50,680 and if you could see what was on-screen through the smoky fug, 47 00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:53,920 there they were. Bogart smoked, Bacall smoked... 48 00:02:53,920 --> 00:02:57,280 I mean, cigarettes... Cigarettes were glamorous, cigarettes were... 49 00:02:57,280 --> 00:02:58,960 They were a shorthand for sex. 50 00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:02,400 I mean, cigarettes were what the movies allowed INSTEAD of sex. 51 00:03:02,400 --> 00:03:04,920 Everywhere, ads for sophisticated cigarettes, 52 00:03:04,920 --> 00:03:06,280 ads for manly cigarettes, 53 00:03:06,280 --> 00:03:08,360 ads for cigarettes that were ladylike, 54 00:03:08,360 --> 00:03:12,360 cigarettes that were cheap, posh, filtered, Black Cat, Turkish... 55 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:16,440 Black Cat, the cigarette for smokers suffering from bronchitis. 56 00:03:21,440 --> 00:03:23,800 How did we get there 57 00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:26,760 from a plant closely related to the potato? 58 00:03:27,840 --> 00:03:30,640 And why don't I smoke? 59 00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:33,160 THUNDERCLAP 60 00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:35,000 FLIES BUZZ 61 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:41,120 THUNDERCLAP 62 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:50,640 RHYTHMIC CHANTING 63 00:03:56,800 --> 00:04:00,240 On the 11th of October, 1492, 64 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:04,560 on a Caribbean island that no European had ever seen before, 65 00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:08,120 Christopher Columbus carried out one of history's 66 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:11,520 most baffling and pointless transactions. 67 00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:17,760 He and his landing party had met some natives 68 00:04:17,760 --> 00:04:19,520 who were blissfully unaware 69 00:04:19,520 --> 00:04:23,000 that Columbus had renamed their island San Salvador, 70 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,200 and had claimed it on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. 71 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:31,680 The natives gave Columbus beads, fruit and some dried leaves. 72 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:36,520 In return, Columbus gave them a pair of red hats. 73 00:04:45,200 --> 00:04:48,360 The beads and the fruit needed no explanation. 74 00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:50,240 The leaves were just confusing. 75 00:04:52,640 --> 00:04:55,840 Columbus had them thrown overboard, and sailed on. 76 00:04:56,960 --> 00:04:59,440 What the natives did with the red hats 77 00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:00,960 is not recorded. 78 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:08,800 And it wasn't just the leaves. 79 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:10,800 Geography was confusing too. 80 00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:15,600 Columbus thought he was here, or hereabouts, 81 00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:16,760 near China. 82 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:21,040 Actually, he was here, on the other side of the world, 83 00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:23,280 amongst the islands of the Caribbean, 84 00:05:23,280 --> 00:05:25,520 near to his next discovery. 85 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:31,240 We should forgive Columbus for being bad at navigation. 86 00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:34,040 After all, no-one else was any better. 87 00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:40,040 Yet, when his ships arrived 88 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:43,320 at what we now know as the island of Cuba, 89 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:46,680 Columbus, still thinking he was near China, 90 00:05:46,680 --> 00:05:51,480 sent two members of the crew ashore with letters for the Chinese Khan. 91 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:56,800 When they returned, 92 00:05:56,800 --> 00:06:00,560 it was to report that the Great Khan was nowhere to be found, 93 00:06:00,560 --> 00:06:04,120 but they had met several more natives on the road 94 00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:07,800 with some more of those mysterious dried leaves, 95 00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:12,000 and these natives had rolled the leaves into tubes, 96 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:14,480 lit them, sucked them, 97 00:06:14,480 --> 00:06:16,880 inhaling the smoky fumes. 98 00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:26,200 The two men had tried some and liked it. 99 00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:30,000 It filled them with a sense of energy, wellbeing. 100 00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:36,000 Tobacco, the natives called it. 101 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,520 At least, that's the word Columbus's men had heard. 102 00:06:41,240 --> 00:06:42,440 The name stuck. 103 00:06:44,840 --> 00:06:46,280 And so did the habit. 104 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:50,920 What Columbus's men had seen and smoked 105 00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:54,080 was a kind of tobacco as domesticated as any dog. 106 00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:59,080 It only survives as a pure strain through cultivation, 107 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:02,200 and archaeologists have traced its cultivation 108 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:06,880 all the way back to the highlands of Peru in 2000BC. 109 00:07:09,280 --> 00:07:12,760 It's part of a plant family, the nightshades, 110 00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:17,320 that includes deadly poisons, spicy peppers, chillies, 111 00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:19,480 aubergines and potatoes. 112 00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:24,880 From Peru, it had spread throughout the Northern and Southern Americas, 113 00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:28,120 and crossed the sea to Cuba with the Native American tribe 114 00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:30,840 that Columbus would have called the Caribs. 115 00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:33,040 In common with all other Native Americans, 116 00:07:33,040 --> 00:07:36,360 the Caribs believed that the gods had made tobacco 117 00:07:36,360 --> 00:07:40,120 as the very first step in the creation of the whole world. 118 00:07:41,160 --> 00:07:44,920 When people were given the plant, they were given a holy herb, 119 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:49,800 and they had to treat it in a way to communicate with the gods. 120 00:07:49,800 --> 00:07:53,720 And the only people who understood this relationship were the shamans, 121 00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:57,080 who consumed this stuff in vast quantities, 122 00:07:57,080 --> 00:08:00,480 in order to get, we would now say, as high as possible, 123 00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:04,800 in order to see through into the supernatural world, OK? 124 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:08,680 So, if you were ill, right, you'd go to the shaman, 125 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:13,240 the shaman would smoke up to... until his eyeballs fell out, 126 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:16,880 and then he'd tell you what your problem is, 127 00:08:16,880 --> 00:08:19,520 and if it turned out to be, he said, 128 00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:23,520 that a malevolent force has put something in your body 129 00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:26,840 that's making you feel pain here, 130 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:30,360 he would blow tobacco around the area 131 00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:36,320 and then suck up into his body the offending item, 132 00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:39,720 and then the offending item would disappear in the shaman's body 133 00:08:39,720 --> 00:08:42,880 because he's now got supernatural powers. 134 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:50,120 Smoking soon became common among the Spanish colonists. 135 00:08:50,120 --> 00:08:52,120 They even smoked during Mass. 136 00:08:52,120 --> 00:08:55,160 Their priest disapproved of what was clearly a vice, 137 00:08:55,160 --> 00:08:57,440 and told them to stop. 138 00:08:57,440 --> 00:09:01,240 The smokers replied that it was not in their power to do so. 139 00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:04,800 There was something mysterious going on. 140 00:09:06,680 --> 00:09:09,040 Tobacco had its hooks in them. 141 00:09:09,040 --> 00:09:11,600 They were addicted, but to what? 142 00:09:13,160 --> 00:09:16,200 300 years later, an Italian scientist 143 00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:22,080 would extract what he described as tobacco's essential oil - nicotine. 144 00:09:23,160 --> 00:09:27,800 But it's only recently that science has begun to understand its power. 145 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:31,600 What happens when we smoke? 146 00:09:34,280 --> 00:09:37,400 You inhale this burning leaf, 147 00:09:37,400 --> 00:09:39,960 which contains nicotine and other things, 148 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:42,480 into the lungs, into the blood, into the brain, 149 00:09:42,480 --> 00:09:46,040 and then it really seems to target this part of the brain here, 150 00:09:46,040 --> 00:09:48,400 this part of the brain we call the striatum, 151 00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:50,680 and I'll just show you an image of this here 152 00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:52,640 because it illustrates very well. 153 00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:56,640 This is an image of the human brain showing dopamine, 154 00:09:56,640 --> 00:10:00,240 where the dopamine receptors in the brain are. 155 00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:01,960 Dopamine does what, exactly? 156 00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:04,880 Dopamine is the get-up-and-go transmitter. 157 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:08,040 If you don't have any dopamine, then you can't move, 158 00:10:08,040 --> 00:10:11,160 you have Parkinson's disease, you can be completely immobile, 159 00:10:11,160 --> 00:10:15,960 and what nicotine does is promote the function of dopamine here, 160 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:20,640 so it gives people who perhaps don't have enough dopamine a little bit extra, 161 00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:25,440 to keep them functioning and thinking and feeling optimally. 162 00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:28,360 And I'll just show you this next image. 163 00:10:28,360 --> 00:10:32,240 We've done our own research on this and we've shown that, basically, 164 00:10:32,240 --> 00:10:35,640 when people are smoking, the more happy they are 165 00:10:35,640 --> 00:10:38,080 is associated with having more dopamine, 166 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:41,240 and the ones who have less dopamine are less happy, 167 00:10:41,240 --> 00:10:45,280 so I think dopamine is involved in keeping your sense of well-being, and you... 168 00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:48,000 So it's like an anti-depressant in some kind of way? 169 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:50,600 It is, actually. Absolutely. It's interesting. 170 00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:54,240 This image here shows that what smoking does 171 00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:56,960 is actually block one of the enzymes in the brain 172 00:10:56,960 --> 00:10:59,240 that some anti-depressants block too. 173 00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:03,720 16th-century smokers didn't know 174 00:11:03,720 --> 00:11:07,160 that nicotine was the source of tobacco's addictive power... 175 00:11:09,120 --> 00:11:10,680 ..didn't know that nicotine, 176 00:11:10,680 --> 00:11:13,760 by increasing the amount of dopamine in their brains, 177 00:11:13,760 --> 00:11:15,760 made their brains more efficient, 178 00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:19,800 or that it amplified the pleasure they took in almost everything else. 179 00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:27,400 The nature of tobacco's power was hidden from them... 180 00:11:29,240 --> 00:11:31,520 ..but impossible to ignore. 181 00:11:31,520 --> 00:11:34,600 For instance, it clearly suppressed the appetite... 182 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:38,040 ..a cure for the sin of gluttony. 183 00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:42,760 For several people who studied it, 184 00:11:42,760 --> 00:11:45,200 this power qualified it as a medicine. 185 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:50,040 One Spanish doctor declared tobacco to be a cure for 186 00:11:50,040 --> 00:11:53,880 rottenness of the mouth and for them that are short of wind, 187 00:11:53,880 --> 00:11:57,480 an effective cure for any illness of any internal organ, 188 00:11:57,480 --> 00:11:58,840 for bad breath, 189 00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:02,080 especially in children who have eaten too much meat, 190 00:12:02,080 --> 00:12:04,400 for kidney stones, tapeworms, 191 00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:07,720 wounds from poison arrows, and... 192 00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:09,480 tiger bites. 193 00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:15,720 Tobacco spread rapidly. 194 00:12:15,720 --> 00:12:19,320 There were smokers in England by 1571. 195 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:21,680 Some of them were household names - 196 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:24,120 Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh. 197 00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:27,360 They sold tobacco as well as smoking it. 198 00:12:27,360 --> 00:12:30,520 Their only source of tobacco was Spanish suppliers 199 00:12:30,520 --> 00:12:33,280 who had grown it in their New World plantations. 200 00:12:34,400 --> 00:12:36,360 Fools paid for it. 201 00:12:36,360 --> 00:12:39,000 Drake and Raleigh got theirs for free 202 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:42,280 by stealing it from Spanish ports and ships. 203 00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:54,760 In 1602, more than 16,000 pounds of tobacco arrived in London. 204 00:12:54,760 --> 00:12:57,200 The city was already smoking heavily. 205 00:13:00,040 --> 00:13:01,880 Along the banks of the Thames, 206 00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:05,200 amongst the pebbles, shells, bits of brick and tile, 207 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:07,760 fragments of broken clay pipes abound. 208 00:13:18,160 --> 00:13:19,600 Amazing collection. 209 00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:22,320 Proof positive. 210 00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:26,320 People were smokers...big time! 211 00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:35,000 This was the London in which James VI of Scotland arrived a year later. 212 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:38,720 As the nearest male relative of the dead Queen Bess, 213 00:13:38,720 --> 00:13:42,560 he was about to become James I of England. 214 00:13:42,560 --> 00:13:45,360 Two crowns, one mantelpiece, 215 00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:48,560 and a throne room full of smokers. 216 00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:58,760 People wondered what sort of a king he was going to be. 217 00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:04,880 He was going to be a king who wanted London to smell better. 218 00:14:07,440 --> 00:14:10,320 Well, it wasn't likely to have smelt nice in the first place, 219 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:16,600 what with horse dung, human dung, urine of different species, and sweaty bodies. 220 00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:20,320 But these smells held no terror for James. 221 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:23,400 I mean, after all, Scottish life was no different. 222 00:14:23,400 --> 00:14:26,440 No, what really got up his nose 223 00:14:26,440 --> 00:14:30,160 was a smell of an altogether different kind. 224 00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:36,960 James had arrived in London to find it addicted to tobacco. 225 00:14:36,960 --> 00:14:40,440 Its narrow streets were full of smoking dens. 226 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:45,560 People smoked upstairs, downstairs, in m'lady's chamber... 227 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:48,320 James really hated smoke. 228 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:50,640 And he hated smokers even more. 229 00:14:52,280 --> 00:14:54,080 Soon after coming to the throne, 230 00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:57,760 James locked the most famous smoker in either kingdom 231 00:14:57,760 --> 00:14:59,360 in the Tower of London. 232 00:15:02,560 --> 00:15:06,560 The evidence that Walter Raleigh was plotting to dethrone the king 233 00:15:06,560 --> 00:15:08,000 was less than flimsy. 234 00:15:09,080 --> 00:15:12,880 The evidence that he smoked a pipe was very strong indeed. 235 00:15:14,640 --> 00:15:20,520 And in 1604, James published an assault on smokers and smoking - 236 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:23,960 the Counterblast against Tobacco. 237 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:27,000 Why did he write the Counterblast? 238 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:30,080 Where did this stand against tobacco come from, do we know? 239 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:34,760 I suspect that it was not much more than he hated the smell of it. 240 00:15:34,760 --> 00:15:37,760 The word "stink" appears 12 times in the Counterblast, 241 00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:39,480 the word "smell" appears five times. 242 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:41,960 But there was no sign of this dissension 243 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:44,400 when he was King of Scotland, was there? Or was that...? 244 00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:46,120 He never... There's no record of him 245 00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:48,920 being particularly antagonistic towards tobacco. 246 00:15:48,920 --> 00:15:51,840 Possibly, London may have been a much smokier place 247 00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:53,760 than anywhere in Scotland, for one thing. 248 00:15:53,760 --> 00:15:56,160 I think it might have come as a real shock to him 249 00:15:56,160 --> 00:15:59,080 when he moved down from Edinburgh how much smoke was going on. 250 00:15:59,080 --> 00:16:02,160 Foreign observers at the time commented at how amazed they are 251 00:16:02,160 --> 00:16:05,120 at people smoking everywhere - in theatres, in the streets, 252 00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:06,840 in the shops and in the bars. 253 00:16:06,840 --> 00:16:10,160 You didn't have smoking like this, really, anywhere else in the world, 254 00:16:10,160 --> 00:16:12,400 except possibly in Holland. 255 00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:14,720 But England, by the end of the 16th century, 256 00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:17,000 was almost uniquely associated with smoking. 257 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:19,920 Other nations used snuff, or used it medicinally, 258 00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:21,880 or occasionally smoked, 259 00:16:21,880 --> 00:16:25,440 but nobody was smoking pipes at the same rate as the English were. 260 00:16:27,960 --> 00:16:31,200 James had declared war on tobacco. 261 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:33,560 He raised the duty on tobacco imports 262 00:16:33,560 --> 00:16:37,560 from two pence to six shillings and ten pence a pound, 263 00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:41,640 a truly astonishing increase of 4,000%. 264 00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:45,200 But smoking continued to increase. 265 00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:50,440 For the rest of his reign, tobacco dogged his footsteps. 266 00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:53,280 For all his peaceable attitudes, he wanted an empire, 267 00:16:53,280 --> 00:16:56,520 but he didn't want one acquired by conquest. 268 00:16:56,520 --> 00:16:59,240 Conquest was a risky business. 269 00:16:59,240 --> 00:17:02,440 And wherever he went, wherever he turned, 270 00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:06,160 he found that the answer lay in that detested leaf. 271 00:17:22,400 --> 00:17:27,760 In 1606, James was approached by representatives of The Virginia Company - 272 00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:32,480 intrepid fellows who wanted a royal licence to start an American colony. 273 00:17:33,720 --> 00:17:38,560 James granted the licence - after all, he had nothing to lose - and, in 1607, 274 00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:43,040 the company's first contingent of colonists sailed up this river. 275 00:17:43,040 --> 00:17:44,720 They needed a name, 276 00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:48,040 and the company's policies on names was simple... 277 00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:52,320 They called everything "James". 278 00:17:58,600 --> 00:18:02,520 As soon as they landed, they set about building Jamesfort, 279 00:18:02,520 --> 00:18:05,560 as protection against both natives and Spaniards. 280 00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:10,880 This was the beginning of the British Empire, 281 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:13,400 the first colony in the New World... 282 00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:18,600 ..an ugly beginning. 283 00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:23,680 The river's waters were undrinkably salty... 284 00:18:26,280 --> 00:18:28,120 ..food supplies were sketchy... 285 00:18:29,400 --> 00:18:33,800 ..the tribe on whose soil Jamesfort was built, the Powhatan, 286 00:18:33,800 --> 00:18:35,760 proved unfriendly. 287 00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:38,440 Jamesfort was a death-trap. 288 00:18:42,120 --> 00:18:44,320 We dug down to the 17th-century level, 289 00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:46,440 which is down about 20 inches below us, 290 00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:49,560 and found where there are at least 34 people buried here, 291 00:18:49,560 --> 00:18:52,920 all crowded in this corner of the fort, 292 00:18:52,920 --> 00:18:56,000 and so we immediately suspected it's from 1607. 293 00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:58,600 The first summer, more than half of the colonists died. 294 00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:00,160 So this is from one year? 295 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:02,160 Yeah, this is from a couple of months. 296 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:03,720 Couple of months? Wow. 297 00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:09,840 Worse was to come. 298 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:15,040 In the next two years, the colonists ate their dogs... 299 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:17,840 ..they ate their horses... 300 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,840 ..and then they ate their enemies. 301 00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:24,360 They get really desperate. 302 00:19:24,360 --> 00:19:27,920 They say that they dug up an Indian that had been buried three days 303 00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:29,680 and ate him. 304 00:19:29,680 --> 00:19:31,960 You know, pretty grotesque. 305 00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:36,080 So what was the chink of light that made everything change? 306 00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:38,560 Well, really, it was the tobacco 307 00:19:38,560 --> 00:19:42,840 that really saved Jamestown, and that's acknowledged. 308 00:19:42,840 --> 00:19:48,360 In one of our wells that we excavated, a quite early well, 309 00:19:48,360 --> 00:19:51,480 we found several seeds of tobacco. 310 00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:55,200 You can see it in there, it's just minuscule, and... 311 00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:58,160 I have to take your word for it that there's a seed in here, is there? 312 00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:00,320 Assume that it is. Oh, there it is! 313 00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:02,040 I see it. God, it's so tiny. 314 00:20:03,040 --> 00:20:06,080 So what we're saying here is that the whole British Empire 315 00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:08,880 grew out of this seed? Of that tiny little seed. 316 00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:10,760 That's phenomenal. 317 00:20:10,760 --> 00:20:12,800 That's truly, truly phenomenal. 318 00:20:23,120 --> 00:20:28,960 S it was tobacco that saved the first British colony on American soil, 319 00:20:28,960 --> 00:20:32,880 tobacco of the same smoothly smokeable variety 320 00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:37,320 that the Spanish had monopolised for over 100 years. 321 00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:43,880 The first planting in Jamestown was in 1611, 322 00:20:43,880 --> 00:20:46,320 the work of a colonist called John Rolfe. 323 00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:53,240 He had almost certainly obtained the seeds whilst shipwrecked in Bermuda. 324 00:20:54,560 --> 00:20:57,760 A mile to the west of the original Jamesfort, 325 00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:00,200 the Americans have raised its ghost, 326 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,040 where they re-enact those days in which, year on year, 327 00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:09,200 the amount of tobacco produced grew and grew and grew. 328 00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:17,160 At Jamestown Settlement, the original strain is still grown. 329 00:21:17,160 --> 00:21:21,440 It was milder than the Spanish weed, more pleasant to smoke... 330 00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:23,560 COCK CROWS 331 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:28,760 ..although these things are relative. 332 00:21:32,080 --> 00:21:33,640 So, Sammy, have you tried it? 333 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:35,800 Yes! Is it good? 334 00:21:35,800 --> 00:21:37,800 Very strong. Very strong. 335 00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:39,440 How strong? 336 00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:40,960 Stronger than a Marlboro. 337 00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:45,680 I don't smoke, so I wouldn't know what that is. 338 00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:47,360 On a scale to one to ten? 339 00:21:47,360 --> 00:21:48,520 Ten. 340 00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:56,280 In 1618, the colony sent 20,000 pounds of tobacco back to the mother country. 341 00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,920 In 1622, the yield was 60,000 pounds. 342 00:21:59,920 --> 00:22:07,160 By 1624, the words "Virginia" and "tobacco" were inseparable, 343 00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:08,680 and they still are. 344 00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:12,000 And James had faced the facts. 345 00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:16,120 The profits from tobacco would give him the empire he had always wanted. 346 00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:18,880 He took control of The Virginia Company. 347 00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:24,960 He outlawed domestic production of tobacco, banned the Spanish product, 348 00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:29,760 and made money hand over fist from sales and import duties. 349 00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:36,000 James fell ill shortly afterwards, 350 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:38,800 but thanks to the most vigorously anti-smoking king 351 00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:42,640 that the thrones of England and Scotland would ever see, 352 00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,440 smoking tobacco was now an act of loyalty. 353 00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:49,800 Every puff and every pipeful 354 00:22:49,800 --> 00:22:52,160 increased England's power and imperial reach, 355 00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:54,440 but the truth was inescapable. 356 00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:56,160 James will have been horribly aware 357 00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,480 as he took his final, smoke-free breaths 358 00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:01,000 that he had done a deal with the devil. 359 00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:02,920 But what had he done? 360 00:23:02,920 --> 00:23:05,240 What would the future hold? 361 00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:11,960 He had created a new world, an empire of addiction. 362 00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:15,560 Within four years of his death, 363 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:20,080 Virginia was sending 1.5 million pounds of tobacco 364 00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,640 back to the motherland each year. 365 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:30,880 It's 1772, 150 years since James' death. 366 00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:39,720 His Stuart dynasty is history, ejected from the throne in 1688... 367 00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,800 ..but his deal with the devil is still monstrously profitable. 368 00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:50,920 Tobacco is booming. 369 00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:55,120 Some Britons still smoke pipes, but snuff is far more popular... 370 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:06,680 ..and in some places, it's more popular than food. 371 00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:08,520 Good morning, Robert. Good morning. 372 00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:13,960 First question, why is there a Highlander outside your shop? 373 00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,280 Well, a Highlander is an old-fashioned, traditional way 374 00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,200 of indicating that the shop sold snuff, in particular Scottish snuff, 375 00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,560 because there was a strong tradition of people taking snuff in Scotland. 376 00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,640 Right. Why would that be? 377 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:29,960 Why did they take snuff in Scotland as opposed to anywhere else? 378 00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:32,160 Well, I think there's a few reasons, 379 00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:36,320 but one of the reasons is actually just the climate in Scotland, 380 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:39,000 the fact that Scotland is quite famous 381 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:41,640 for sort of strong winds and lots of rain, 382 00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,840 and it's therefore quite difficult to actually smoke or keep something... 383 00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:46,760 Harder to light up. Yeah. 384 00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:48,760 My kind of memories of actually... 385 00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:51,360 I always remember women in my family, my mother... 386 00:24:51,360 --> 00:24:53,640 I found out recently my mother took snuff. 387 00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:56,880 My mother started to take snuff after the war, which was kind of weird, 388 00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,400 I never knew this, and it helped her with headaches. 389 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:03,200 Well, snuff was prescribed, was suggested to people 390 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:08,240 as a way of alleviating the problem they had with migraines. Really? 391 00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:12,240 You know, tobacco in all sorts of forms has been given in the past 392 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:14,160 for medical conditions, 393 00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,840 but certainly in terms of clearing the head and sort of dealing with headaches. 394 00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:20,280 Perhaps you'd like to try some snuff? 395 00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,520 I just happen to have here my Jock's Choice snuff, 396 00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:25,680 which is an old Scottish recipe. 397 00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:27,520 Jock's Choice? Jock's Choice. 398 00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:29,720 Well, that's a bit obvious, isn't it? 399 00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,800 Oh, right. Well, I'll give it a go. 400 00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:34,480 OK. 401 00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:37,800 So it's just a little pinch at a time? Just a pinch in your hand, 402 00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,720 and that part of your hand is actually called your snuff box. 403 00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:42,320 Here we go. 404 00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:49,280 Oh! 405 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:52,840 And then we have a snuff handkerchief ready... Yeah. 406 00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:54,800 Oh, dear! That's... 407 00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:00,720 That's a little...more potent than I imagined! 408 00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:04,120 Wow! 409 00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,520 Gosh, that's good, isn't it? He'll be hooked on snuff now. 410 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:11,320 Yeah, I know, I've got to watch it. Yeah, I've got to watch it. 411 00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:27,920 All the snuff being sniffed in 1772 was coming from Virginia... 412 00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:34,960 ..now just one of 13 British colonies in America. 413 00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:40,600 The state is entirely given over to tobacco production. 414 00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:45,040 Some of the estates are large, such as those of Thomas Jefferson, 415 00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:50,120 one of America's founding fathers, who disapproves of slavery... 416 00:26:50,120 --> 00:26:52,680 in theory. 417 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:54,960 But not in practice. 418 00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,960 Some estates are small, but they depend as much as Jefferson's 419 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:01,240 on the labour of negro slaves. 420 00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,320 And there's something else that Thomas Jefferson has in common 421 00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,680 with those smaller, less substantial tobacco planters. 422 00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:12,720 He shops here, or somewhere very like it. 423 00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,640 Brian, welcome to British Virginia. 424 00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:22,800 We are in front of the best surviving tobacco store in all of America. 425 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:27,120 This kind of structure was dotted all over the colony. 426 00:27:27,120 --> 00:27:28,840 How many would there be of these? 427 00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,040 I mean, this...this is... More than one, right? 428 00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:32,800 There are hundreds. 429 00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:35,680 There may have been 350, 400 of these, 430 00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:38,360 from this part of Virginia going west. 431 00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:39,560 Wow. 432 00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:44,320 At these stores, 433 00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,840 all of the requirements for life and tobacco farming 434 00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:48,720 can be bought on credit. 435 00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:53,200 Most of the planters are now so deeply in debt 436 00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:55,080 that their tobacco for years to come 437 00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:59,920 is promised to the owners of these stores, all of whom are Scots, 438 00:27:59,920 --> 00:28:03,560 the so-called Tobacco Lords of Glasgow... 439 00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,240 ..sharks in frock coats and scarlet cloaks, 440 00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:13,120 with rolled wigs, canes, hats laced with gold. 441 00:28:13,120 --> 00:28:16,080 All they really care about is money. 442 00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:18,080 They don't care about political interests, 443 00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:20,400 they don't care about constitutional rights, 444 00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:22,960 they don't fold down on one side or the other. 445 00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,720 They're on their own side. So what happens? 446 00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,200 So, by the time you get to 1775, 447 00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:32,120 when the wheels really start coming off of the British Empire in America, 448 00:28:32,120 --> 00:28:38,000 then it's the Scots merchants that are bearing the brunt of the abuse. 449 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,320 Would you say that would have contributed considerably to the Revolution? 450 00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,400 I think it unquestionably contributed to the American Revolution. 451 00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:50,520 A lot of Virginians felt that what the Scots represented 452 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:53,520 was an empire that wasn't working in their interests, 453 00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:57,480 which is why Virginia actually, in 1776, 454 00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,920 specifically kicks out every Scottish merchant in the colony. 455 00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:03,040 Wow! 456 00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,040 In 1776, the most militant colonists, 457 00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:11,080 many of them tobacco planters from Virginia, 458 00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:15,600 banded together and signed a Declaration of Independence for the 13 colonies. 459 00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:21,880 The American War of Independence wasn't caused exclusively 460 00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,680 by the mother country's greed for tobacco, 461 00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:27,240 but it loomed very large. 462 00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:29,840 And it proved central to the war itself. 463 00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:35,400 The American colonists secured a loan from France to fund their war, 464 00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:39,400 using their tobacco as a guarantee, and the British armies in Virginia, 465 00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:42,840 realising that tobacco was now an important war resource, 466 00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:45,400 took to attacking the tobacco itself. 467 00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:48,440 Hundreds of acres, 468 00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:52,840 thousands of barrels of fine Virginian tobacco, went up in smoke. 469 00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:05,760 Peace came in 1783. 470 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,280 The American colonists had won and went, 471 00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,040 as Americans always have and always will, 472 00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:13,320 straight back to business. 473 00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:18,760 British snuffers returned thankfully to the consumption of snuff, 474 00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,080 and the tobacco lords went to court to try and recover 475 00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:25,560 the debts that had helped start the war. 476 00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:29,760 Many of them succeeded, but the sweet deal was history. 477 00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,720 Over the next 20 years, their wealth gradually dissipated, 478 00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:39,880 like the slowly clearing smoke of a fine, fat cigar. 479 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:48,480 It was far from being the last time that smoking and war crossed paths. 480 00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,880 During the Napoleonic wars, British soldiers came across cigars, 481 00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:59,400 tobacco leaves wrapped into a dense and aromatic tube, 482 00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,640 and Papillotes - minced tobacco rolled up in maize leaves, 483 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,560 and smoked by Spanish peasants. 484 00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:13,120 And during the Crimean wars, they met cigars again... 485 00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:21,160 ..and something else - small tubes of tobacco wrapped in paper. 486 00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,160 By the middle of the 19th century, 487 00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:27,720 the choices available to the would-be tobacco consumer 488 00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:29,640 had multiplied enormously. 489 00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:33,920 Every class consumed, 490 00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:38,440 but did so in ways appropriate to their station in life. 491 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:41,400 The working classes, both men and women, 492 00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:43,880 took snuff or smoked clay pipes. 493 00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,760 Middle class men smoked briar pipes. 494 00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:53,120 Men of the upper classes smoked cigars, 495 00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:57,320 and women of both the middle and upper classes... 496 00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:01,520 disapproved of a habit which society considered unfeminine. 497 00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:06,160 It was absolutely not acceptable for women to smoke. 498 00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,000 It really was totally improper, 499 00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:11,920 because Queen Victoria, who everybody followed anyway, you know, 500 00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,160 she didn't like anyone smoking in her presence, so... 501 00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:17,280 But her husband smoked. Albert smoked. 502 00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:19,440 Yes, and also, at one point, 503 00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:23,280 Queen Victoria's said to have actually tried smoking... Oh, really? 504 00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,880 ..in the grounds of Balmoral, with one of the ladies in waiting, to ward off midges. 505 00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,560 Of course, Edward VII was a notorious smoker. 506 00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:32,800 He was! And the irony was, 507 00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:35,080 he wasn't allowed to smoke anywhere near his mum. 508 00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,280 This was a man who had to lie on his back in his bedroom in Balmoral 509 00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:42,280 and blow smoke up the chimney, with a coal fire, 510 00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:44,680 so his mother couldn't smell it, you know... 511 00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,120 And he was nearly 60 then! 512 00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:48,800 I know. Sad! 513 00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:50,800 And then he had to wait till she'd died, 514 00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,280 and the first appearance he makes in court, he comes out, 515 00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,880 "I'm now the King, Mum's dead, the anti-smoker's gone," 516 00:32:57,880 --> 00:32:59,800 and he looks around and says, 517 00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,640 "Gentlemen, you may smoke," 518 00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:04,520 and they go, "Thank God!" 519 00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,320 And everybody went, "Right, OK, then, la-de-dah-de-dah!" 520 00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:10,480 Everybody's all together now, all dancing around. Wonderful! 521 00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:18,240 Smoking men in smoking rooms, 522 00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:22,160 non-smoking ladies outside, 523 00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:26,600 henpecked husbands nursing their cigars, stoking their pipes, 524 00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:30,360 making sure they had an excuse to hide away from married life 525 00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:31,720 as long as possible. 526 00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,000 It's alien. It's completely different 527 00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:38,360 to the sort of nicotine consumption I grew up with. 528 00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:44,120 But the point is, I suppose, pipes and cigars - 529 00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:46,320 well, you have to devote time to them. 530 00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,040 They're practically a hobby. 531 00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,280 In fact, they are a hobby. 532 00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,400 But now, at about this time, 533 00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:57,360 the cigarette arrives in the UK from France, 534 00:33:57,360 --> 00:33:59,280 and it's not what you think. 535 00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:01,520 It's not a little cigar. 536 00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:06,240 It's small, light, finished in minutes. 537 00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,000 Time for another. 538 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:10,760 Not just a hobby. 539 00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:12,720 It's a habit. 540 00:34:12,720 --> 00:34:14,760 CLOCK TICKS 541 00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:24,800 I think the way to think about the cigarette 542 00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,320 is as a nicotine delivery system, 543 00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:30,800 and it's as though it's been optimised to delivering nicotine 544 00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:35,280 in a way which makes it more rewarding and more addictive. 545 00:34:39,720 --> 00:34:43,080 When a smoker inhales tobacco smoke into the lungs, 546 00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:46,120 the nicotine passes to the brain very quickly, 547 00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,280 so there is an association 548 00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:51,200 between the behaviour of inhaling the tobacco smoke, 549 00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:53,200 and the effect in the brain. 550 00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:56,240 So these associations can be learned very quickly. 551 00:34:56,240 --> 00:34:58,520 Also, when a smoker inhales tobacco, 552 00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,880 there's an irritation in the mouth, the bronchi, the throat. 553 00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,760 It's called the scratch, and, again, 554 00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,080 the brain can associate that sensory irritation 555 00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,880 with the effects of nicotine in the brain, 556 00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:15,920 so the very habit of smoking a cigarette, the very process, 557 00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,880 becomes a very rewarding, pleasurable process 558 00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:22,360 and, indeed, the tobacco companies have manipulated the smoke. 559 00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,400 For example, they make the smoke alkaline by adding ammonia 560 00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:30,000 and, in doing so, when you inhale tobacco smoke into your lungs, 561 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,920 the nicotine transfers much more quickly into your bloodstream, 562 00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:35,560 so it gets to your brain much more quickly. 563 00:35:39,240 --> 00:35:42,720 So the cigarette delivered more nicotine more swiftly, 564 00:35:42,720 --> 00:35:46,160 was more addictive than anything that had come before. 565 00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,480 Now it was simply a question of making more of them. 566 00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:57,600 In 1880, the Americans mechanised cigarette manufacture. 567 00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:02,440 The British Company WD & HO Wills bought this new technology, 568 00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:07,200 a machine that made 211 cigarettes a minute, 569 00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:11,160 and by 1900, cigarettes had cornered more than 10% 570 00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,200 of the British tobacco market. 571 00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:17,360 With equal speed, cigarettes acquired critics. 572 00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,800 Something about these little cylinders 573 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,600 was more troubling than any other form of tobacco consumption. 574 00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:25,680 In both America and Britain, 575 00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,040 Christian Temperance societies were absolutely certain 576 00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,920 that smoking cigarettes was the first step 577 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,840 towards complete moral disintegration. 578 00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:40,160 Nicotine ruined marriages, one pamphlet claimed. 579 00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,960 Nicotine destroyed the capacity to love. 580 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:48,160 Smoking caused nervous depression and suicide. 581 00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:50,520 Smoking caused a terrible condition 582 00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,520 which the campaigners christened "cigarette face". 583 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,080 SCREAMING AND RETCHING Eww! Yuck! 584 00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:03,480 Sometime in the early years of the 20th century, 585 00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:10,200 a young Viennese man concluded that cigarette-smoking was indeed a vice, 586 00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:13,520 that the benefits it offered were dubious, 587 00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:17,280 and its effect on health entirely negative. 588 00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,760 He was a heavy smoker, up to two packs a day, 589 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,320 but he threw his cigarettes into the Danube, 590 00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:27,160 and he never smoked again. 591 00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,360 And so it was that Adolf Hitler, 592 00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:38,400 unlike the vast majority of soldiers who fought in World War One, 593 00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,480 did not smoke in battle. 594 00:37:43,720 --> 00:37:48,360 Cigarettes became part of the standard rations for soldiers. 595 00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:50,920 The cigarette habit began to dominate. 596 00:37:53,720 --> 00:37:55,560 The sensible British captain 597 00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,320 bought extra packs of Woodbines for soldiers 598 00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:00,320 on the night before the big push. 599 00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,920 The Americans joined the war in 1917, 600 00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:12,680 armed with Lucky Strikes and Camels. 601 00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:19,760 In time, the temperance campaigners would be proved correct. 602 00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:23,040 Cigarettes were very bad for the health, 603 00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:27,360 but not as bad for the health as bombs or bullets. 604 00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,960 When Hitler came to power in 1933, 605 00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:44,480 German scientists already suspected that there was a connection 606 00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:47,160 between cigarette-smoking and lung cancer. 607 00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:52,240 Their investigations were revolutionary in their simplicity. 608 00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:55,880 Simply by analysing the lifestyles of cancer victims, 609 00:38:55,880 --> 00:39:01,200 the link between heavy smoking and lung cancer was made brutally clear. 610 00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:06,440 Hitler adopted and adapted this new research 611 00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:08,760 for his own ideological ends. 612 00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,240 Years of political in-fighting 613 00:39:11,240 --> 00:39:14,440 had made him an accomplished and theatrical speechmaker 614 00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:16,680 with a taste for metaphor... 615 00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:23,760 ..and cancer now became his favourite metaphor of all. 616 00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,520 Jews were a cancer in the body politic. 617 00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:35,160 Hitler blamed them for Germany's loss of the First World War. 618 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,520 Bolshevism was a cancer in European culture. 619 00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:39,680 He blamed communism for almost everything 620 00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:41,280 that he didn't blame the Jews for. 621 00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:45,680 As for cancer itself, Hitler saw it as a sign of bad citizenship, 622 00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:47,200 moral weakness. 623 00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:49,520 It was a German's duty to keep himself fit 624 00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:51,200 for service to the state. 625 00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:53,640 Jews, Bolshevism, cancer - 626 00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:58,000 Hitler dedicated himself to eradication of all three. 627 00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:04,280 The Nazis, of course, made no attempt to share their discoveries 628 00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:06,920 about the causes of lung cancer. 629 00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,920 Their research was merely medical. 630 00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:14,440 It was also a military secret, one worth keeping. 631 00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:18,320 Every cigarette smoked shortened the enemy soldier's lifespan. 632 00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:25,200 The Allies' attitude to cigarettes was entirely different. 633 00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:27,640 Tobacco was essential for morale. 634 00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,160 All their leaders smoked. 635 00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,720 Churchill and his cigars were inseparable. 636 00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:39,760 Roosevelt smoked two packs of Camels a day. 637 00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:44,280 Stalin smoked both pipes and cigarettes. 638 00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:47,880 All Allied forces received cigarettes 639 00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,400 as part of their daily ration. 640 00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:54,720 Field Marshal Montgomery disapproved of both drinking and smoking, 641 00:40:54,720 --> 00:40:59,560 but still made a point of being filmed handing out free cigarettes 642 00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:01,560 to the men of his command. 643 00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,320 During the war, 644 00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:11,880 both the servicemen of the US and servicemen of the UK 645 00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,400 were given cigarettes. 646 00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,800 Now, that was to alleviate stress. 647 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:19,840 Would that be the case? 648 00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:22,480 That's a fascinating question! 649 00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:24,560 Soldiers were really... 650 00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:28,240 Really thought that cigarettes were very, very helpful to them 651 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:30,280 and they almost all used them. 652 00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:36,480 That immediate hit...increased clarity, probably also calming... 653 00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,440 Cigarettes, nicotine, is the only drug we know 654 00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:43,320 that actually improves performance but also reduces anxiety, 655 00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,040 so I think there was a significant psychological benefit 656 00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:49,600 to using cigarettes in wartime. 657 00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:55,520 But, unfortunately, that created the tradition of smoking, 658 00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:57,440 and it wasn't just the soldiers. 659 00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:02,480 In fact, we discovered that that fed back into the women at home, 660 00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:05,000 particularly those who were working in industry. 661 00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:06,560 They also started smoking. 662 00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,400 So the whole rise of smoking really came in the second war, 663 00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:13,160 when it became not only acceptable to do it 664 00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:15,280 but also seen as being helpful. 665 00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,240 Cigarettes helped keep the home fires burning 666 00:42:21,240 --> 00:42:23,080 and cross-hairs steady, 667 00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:26,440 helped both combatants and non-combatants 668 00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:31,400 to live with the ever-present fear of imminent destruction. 669 00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,000 By the end of the war, 670 00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:39,520 that fear had come remarkably close to making smokers of us all. 671 00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,920 A survey of 1949 revealed that 39% of British women 672 00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:49,920 and 81% of British men were smokers - 673 00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:53,160 60% of the adult population. 674 00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:01,280 To say nothing of the kids. 675 00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,720 When did you start? Can you remember when you started? 676 00:43:07,720 --> 00:43:11,600 Yeah, I can. I was becoming a regular smoker when I was seven. 677 00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:13,080 Seven?! Seven. 678 00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:15,160 Can you remember your first fag? 679 00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:17,320 Can you remember the first moment 680 00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,200 that you actually put it in your mouth? 681 00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:21,800 Uh... 682 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:26,440 I can't remember the first one, I remember the first several. 683 00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,800 THEY LAUGH 684 00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:33,040 It was during the... God, was it during the war? 685 00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:37,120 Just after the second war, just after the Second World War. 686 00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:40,120 You'd find fag ends in the gutter. Oh, aye. 687 00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,720 Some guy had flung them away. Dowpies, we called them. Aye. 688 00:43:43,720 --> 00:43:49,200 Douts, we called them. You'd just go and pick up a dout and sort of... 689 00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,880 If it was still lit, you were happy as a bee, you know. 690 00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:56,240 Pass it round, and smoked it till the tobacco fell out 691 00:43:56,240 --> 00:43:59,160 and you were left with a wee tiny bit of black paper. 692 00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,960 You just sort of lay in the long grass at the back door... 693 00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,320 No, it wasn't grass at the back door, 694 00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:08,600 it was all worn away, hard earth... 695 00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,400 Cinder! Earth and cinder. 696 00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:12,840 Yeah! 697 00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,200 Oot the washing green. Nothing green about it. 698 00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,880 Hmm, happy days! 699 00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:27,960 But even in those happy days, 700 00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:30,920 there were a few places where you couldn't smoke... 701 00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:34,760 ..where it simply wasn't safe, 702 00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:36,600 like the Dundee jute factories 703 00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,400 where my parents and many of my relatives worked. 704 00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:43,880 Smoking wasn't an option. 705 00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,640 The jute was highly inflammable. 706 00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:49,240 Every mill was a powder keg. 707 00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,920 But also what wasn't an option was to be without... 708 00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:00,640 I mean, life without some kind of tobacco. 709 00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:06,200 So, whereas they would maybe smoke at home, 710 00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,400 they'd take snuff at the mill. 711 00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,160 In fact, all my relatives had some kind of tobacco habit. 712 00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:16,040 Uncle Geordie chewed tobacco, Auntie Sarah took snuff, 713 00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:20,000 and Auntie Susan smoked a wee Willy Woodbine, ken? 714 00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:38,920 In 1950, the medical authorities in both Britain and America 715 00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:42,720 published new studies of the long-term effects of cigarette smoking. 716 00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:53,400 Neither report cited the research done by the Nazis in the 1930s... 717 00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:57,480 but both came to the same unavoidable conclusion. 718 00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:04,040 Which was this - smoking causes lung cancer. 719 00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,600 The British Health Ministry advised the government 720 00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:10,480 that what had been shown was not cause, but an association. 721 00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:12,480 "Nothing need be done," they said. 722 00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:16,760 And the British government took their advice, and did nothing. 723 00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,200 I guess we have to wonder why. 724 00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:24,480 But I think the answer's fairly simple. 725 00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:27,360 The year before, the government had produced a report, 726 00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,120 in which it admitted that for most people, cigarettes 727 00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:34,040 "made good the inadequacies of life". 728 00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,200 And that rings true. 729 00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,400 After all, this was the Britain I grew up in, 730 00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:44,080 a world of post-war austerity, in which cigarettes were still doing 731 00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,360 what they had done during the war itself, 732 00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:48,320 for my family as much as anyone else - 733 00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:53,600 stress management, a mild but smelly anti-depressant. 734 00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:56,040 But I still have questions. 735 00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:57,920 How could nicotine have captured 736 00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,600 as many as 60% of the British population? 737 00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:04,520 And why did it never capture me? 738 00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:08,040 Perhaps there are some answers hidden in my genes. 739 00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,040 Hi, Brian, how's it going? I'm fine. 740 00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:13,520 So I hear you're keen to have my sputum. 741 00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:16,120 Yes, your sputum, that's how we're going to take your DNA 742 00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:19,160 to test which genes you may have... All right. 743 00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:22,880 ..which may or may not pre-dispose you to nicotine addiction. 744 00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:27,280 I'm taking this test for all the wrong reasons, to be honest. 745 00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:31,600 It's been devised to help smokers learn what might be the best way to stop... 746 00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:34,600 and I want to know why I've never started. 747 00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:38,760 But perhaps it can tell me something about that too. 748 00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:43,800 This test studies three groups of genes, 749 00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:46,360 a total of seven genes in all. 750 00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:50,000 One group affects the nicotine receptors in my brain, 751 00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:53,480 the neurons that light up when nicotine is present, 752 00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:57,400 how sensitive my brain is to the presence of nicotine... 753 00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:02,560 Another group of genes controls how actively my brain responds 754 00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:04,800 to rewards, to pleasure. 755 00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:08,880 It's to do with that get-up-and-go chemical, dopamine. 756 00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,200 If my brain makes too little dopamine, 757 00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,000 cigarettes will make it make more, 758 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,680 and I will be more likely to be nicotine-dependent. 759 00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:21,840 And the third group of genes 760 00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:26,440 controls how quickly I break nicotine down in my body. 761 00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:31,000 If I break it down fast, then I'll want another cigarette... 762 00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:32,200 and quick. 763 00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:36,640 If I break it down slowly, the next cigarette can wait. 764 00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:41,080 It'll take some time for the test to tell me about myself. 765 00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:45,640 But what about that smoking majority back in 1949? 766 00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:49,680 Now, if we go back to the end of the Second World War, 767 00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:52,360 we had something like 60% of people smoking, 768 00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:56,880 so there must have been this huge kind of influx of smokers. 769 00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:59,200 What would be the conditions for that? 770 00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:01,440 Well, I think that's very interesting. 771 00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:04,320 The genes which we're testing you for are pretty common, 772 00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:08,000 so most people would have one or more of the genes 773 00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,480 which make them likely to smoke. 774 00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,640 So the general population is actually predisposed to smoke. 775 00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:19,360 I'll have to wait for my test results, 776 00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,600 but that's one mystery solved. 777 00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,200 60% people smoked in 1949 778 00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:30,800 because most of us have the genes for nicotine dependency. 779 00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:33,000 As the '50s progressed, 780 00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:35,800 scientists moved beyond the lifestyle analysis 781 00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:39,440 that had shown an association between smoking and lung cancer. 782 00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:42,720 Every so often, news of their progress 783 00:49:42,720 --> 00:49:47,080 reached the front pages of the national press, 784 00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:51,960 and in 1962, a new report announced the definite demonstration 785 00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:57,280 of a causal link between smoking and carcinogenesis. 786 00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,280 NEWSREEL: 'Today, the Royal College of Physicians 787 00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:04,480 'published their report on smoking and lung cancer. 788 00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:07,520 'They say conclusively and authoritatively 789 00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:11,360 'that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer, 790 00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:15,720 'causes bronchitis and contributes to coronary heart disease.' 791 00:50:17,720 --> 00:50:21,560 It was the by-products of smoking tobacco that killed - 792 00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:26,560 tars, carbon monoxide, cyanide, assorted carcinogens. 793 00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:30,400 Further research revealed that all forms of tobacco consumption 794 00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:33,600 came with associated cancer risks. 795 00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:37,000 But cigarettes were the most lethal by far. 796 00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:42,480 Smoking became a paler, more guilty pleasure. 797 00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,760 It began a 50-year retreat from the public eye, 798 00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:53,040 with bans on ads in cinemas, on TV, eventually in print. 799 00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:58,360 And in 2006, at last it began to retreat from public spaces too. 800 00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:05,680 Stewart, tell me the sort of process you had to go through 801 00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:10,240 to really achieve your goal, because - correct me if I'm wrong - 802 00:51:10,240 --> 00:51:12,760 but this was the first time this had happened. 803 00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:16,560 I mean, there was no smoking legislation in England, it was... 804 00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,160 You sort of started the ball rolling... 805 00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,040 Yeah, there was certainly no smoking legislation of any sort 806 00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,600 throughout the UK. I was very keen to do it. 807 00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:26,120 I was elected in 2003, 808 00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:30,440 and the press here thought that it was the craziest thing, that it would never happen. 809 00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:32,960 Scotland was a society where smoking was normal, 810 00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:35,160 the mere idea that you couldn't smoke in a pub 811 00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,320 was seen as completely bizarre and would never happen and, in fact, 812 00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,000 the very first interview that I did about it at the time, 813 00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:43,200 the first question I ever got on the ban was, 814 00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:45,800 "So you're not interested in a political career, then?" 815 00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:48,960 Because the assumption was that this would be so unpopular, 816 00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:52,560 you wouldn't be re-elected, it'd be very unlikely to get passed, 817 00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:55,280 and just the nature of people in Scotland 818 00:51:55,280 --> 00:51:57,280 was that they wouldn't obey such a daft law. 819 00:51:57,280 --> 00:51:59,960 There was no need for nerves. 820 00:51:59,960 --> 00:52:02,960 Astonishingly, the ban took. 821 00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:06,120 But then, perhaps, we shouldn't all have been so surprised. 822 00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:09,960 Everybody now knows how damaging tobacco is. 823 00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:14,160 The list of serious or fatal illnesses that it causes 824 00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:16,000 is terrifyingly long. 825 00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:21,200 In 1992, an analysis of mortality in the developed world 826 00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:25,680 concluded that almost 20% of deaths could be attributed 827 00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:29,400 to the ill-effects of active or passive smoking. 828 00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:35,200 So the ban did Stewart's political career no harm at all. 829 00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:37,480 England followed suit a year later. 830 00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,400 Smokers, of course, are still quite visible, 831 00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:45,560 almost more visible than before - 832 00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:48,480 on street corners, outside receptions, in goods-ins, 833 00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:51,320 huddled together in the rain and wind. 834 00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,120 I mean, it's hardly glamorous. 835 00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:55,960 A very far cry indeed from the days 836 00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:58,800 when publicity pictures for people in my profession 837 00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:02,920 included cigarettes as a standard accessory. 838 00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:34,560 Once, we thought that tobacco was a medicine. 839 00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,120 Now we know that it's a killer. 840 00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:40,160 But nicotine itself is not the fatal agent. 841 00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:44,360 It increases blood pressure, but is otherwise relatively innocent. 842 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:50,920 And the final irony, it may even be useable as a medicine 843 00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:54,200 to treat the troubling diseases of old age. 844 00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,120 Professor Paul Newhouse came to meet me 845 00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,640 where Britain's long love affair with a fatal leaf began. 846 00:54:06,240 --> 00:54:09,640 So there's two possible ways that nicotine might be helpful. 847 00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:14,520 It seems to stimulate parts of the brain that need to be more active, 848 00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:18,200 and maybe even shut down other parts that don't need to be active. 849 00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:22,360 And what we think it's doing is making the brain more efficient. 850 00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,400 So you don't need to have activity in all these different areas 851 00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,320 to get what it is you're trying to do. 852 00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:31,000 So that's one way that we think nicotine works. 853 00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,520 The other possible way is more longer term. 854 00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:35,640 And we think that nicotine may actually have 855 00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:38,040 what we call neuro-protective effects. 856 00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:42,080 It may actually protect nerve cells from degenerating 857 00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:46,480 in things like Alzheimer's disease, or early pre-Alzheimer's disease. 858 00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:49,440 And so nicotine may be able to be helpful 859 00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:52,480 in kind of two directions at once. 860 00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,240 What we're hoping for is that it improves symptoms, 861 00:54:56,240 --> 00:55:00,600 it delays the onset, perhaps, of more severe symptoms, 862 00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:03,960 and it maybe pushes back the whole disease process. 863 00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:07,320 But you're not suggesting I should start smoking? No. 864 00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:09,320 Good drug, bad delivery system. 865 00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:19,440 Sadly, that was how my parents, and yours, likely enough, 866 00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:22,480 took their nicotine - by cigarette. 867 00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:28,240 Cigarettes never tempted me, 868 00:55:28,240 --> 00:55:30,840 and I'm still wondering why. 869 00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:35,040 The results of my genetic test have arrived. 870 00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:37,600 But they might as well be written in Greek. 871 00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:41,440 So I've got the...the report. 872 00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:43,640 Of course I don't understand a word of it. 873 00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:45,480 You're going to have to explain it to me. 874 00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:47,600 Well, it's really interesting. 875 00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:49,840 Out of these seven different genes, 876 00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:53,480 you've only got three which are linked to smoking 877 00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:55,360 and that's really very unusual. 878 00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:57,600 Really? I reckon... 879 00:55:57,600 --> 00:56:01,000 It's difficult to know exactly what the odds are, 880 00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:05,160 but I reckon between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000 chance 881 00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:08,360 of having this particular combination of genes. 882 00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:11,600 Wow. So I'm unusual, then, am I? 883 00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:12,960 You're special! 884 00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:16,120 I'm special! Oh, good God. 885 00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:22,520 So I don't smoke because I'm one of the lucky few 886 00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:26,560 who don't have the genes for nicotine dependence. 887 00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:31,800 But what my parents gave me was the experience of passive smoking, 888 00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:33,680 which I came to hate. 889 00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:37,560 I can't blame them for smoking. 890 00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:41,040 They were surrounded by a smoking majority. 891 00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:44,560 They lived through two world wars and the Great Depression... 892 00:56:46,720 --> 00:56:49,360 ..the sort of stressful times that have always boded well 893 00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:51,040 for cigarette sales. 894 00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:58,600 For 400 or 500 hundred years, we magnified our pleasures, 895 00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:01,440 dosed our nerves and fears with nicotine... 896 00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,480 ..a mildly psychogenic drug 897 00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,800 that made the grind of daily life supportable. 898 00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:16,000 We weren't to know, of course, that the ways that we took it 899 00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:19,240 were all toxic, cancer-causing, life-threatening, 900 00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,440 and we had no real idea of the role that nicotine was playing 901 00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:25,800 inside our bodies and our brains. 902 00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:27,600 And now that we do, you know, 903 00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:30,320 I think I understand my family a little bit better, 904 00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,720 particularly my mother. 905 00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:36,920 My mother, when she smoked, always had a beatific look on her face, 906 00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:40,960 as if she was at one with the world, at peace. 907 00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:43,240 It gave her a sense of well-being. 908 00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:45,360 And remember our friend, Sir Walter Raleigh, 909 00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:48,520 when we left him in the Tower of London a while ago? 910 00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:51,960 King James had him executed in 1618. 911 00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:54,880 Raleigh smoked his pipe on the way to the axe man's block, 912 00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:58,240 and after his death, the pipe case was found, 913 00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:01,240 and inscribed on it was a little Latin motto. 914 00:58:01,240 --> 00:58:07,880 Translated, it read, "My companion in that most wretched time." 915 00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:13,120 Now, I believe that's a phrase that almost any smoker will understand. 916 00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:20,240 Turned out nice again! 917 00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,360 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd