chewing tobacco

chewing tobacco, tobacco used for chewing and that appears in a variety of forms, notably (1) “flat plug,” a compressed rectangular cake of bright tobacco, sweetened lightly or not at all, (2) “navy,” a flat rectangular cake of burley tobacco, highly flavoured with either licorice, rum, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, honey, or some other spice or sweetener, (3) “twist,” tough, dark tobacco rolled and braided into ropes, (4) “fine-cut,” shredded, stripped leaf, not compressed, of expensive blend, and (5) “scrap,” cigar by-products consisting of loose leaf ends and clippings.

Tobacco chewing was common among certain American Indian groups. After 1815 it became almost a distinctive mode of tobacco usage in the United States, replacing pipe smoking. Partly the switch was a chauvinistic reaction against European snuff-taking and pipe-smoking; partly it was a matter of convenience for pioneering Americans on the move, since chewing was easier than lighting up a cumbersome pipe. The symbol of the change was the spittoon or cuspidor, which became a necessity of 19th-century America. Manufacturing statistics are revealing: of 348 tobacco factories listed by the 1860 census for Virginia and North Carolina, 335 concentrated wholly on chewing tobacco, and only 6 others even bothered with smoking tobacco as a sideline, using scraps from plug production.

The rising popularity of manufactured cigarettes by the beginning of the 20th century spelled the decline of chewing tobacco. After World War I, plug-taking fell off abruptly, though its usage increased in the 1980s and early ’90s as it was believed to be a safe alternative to cigarette smoking. Studies, however, revealed that chewing tobacco was associated with numerous health problems, including cancer and heart disease.