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Why does Safehold have tobacco?

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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Salisria   » Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:13 am

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If tobacco had been gengeneered to be healthy, I can't imagine that there would be Pasqualate tracts warning of its dangers. Such tracts would almost certainly be based upon warnings contained in the Book of Pasquale. Moreover, while nicotine itself isn't carcinogenic, certain byproducts of nicotine produced when tobacco is cured are some of the worst carcinogens present in tobacco. Conceivably, the Terran Federation had a high-tech curing process that avoided generating those byproducts, but not Safehold.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Louis R   » Fri Jul 22, 2022 3:40 pm

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Not to mention that the worst ones are combustion products - and would be present regardless of what is being burned. There's a reason that current & former fire-fighters have probably the highest cancer rate of any human group, despite the massive precautions taken against smoke exposure. To the point were in many workers comp regimes 'firefighter with cancer' is now an open and shut case for compensation for work-related illness. IIRC, there is some evidence that the [re]invention of the chimney made a huge difference in the prevalence of respiratory issues, included protocancers, in the admittedly small number of cases where suitable tissue and bone structure have been preserved for examination in archeological contexts [Yes, the smoke from modern synthetics is nasty. I'm told that burning wool and silk are even more toxic]

So your original question is a good one. I can only suppose that the answer is the same as for 'why does the Honorverse still have tobacco?': because!

Salisria wrote:If tobacco had been gengeneered to be healthy, I can't imagine that there would be Pasqualate tracts warning of its dangers. Such tracts would almost certainly be based upon warnings contained in the Book of Pasquale. Moreover, while nicotine itself isn't carcinogenic, certain byproducts of nicotine produced when tobacco is cured are some of the worst carcinogens present in tobacco. Conceivably, the Terran Federation had a high-tech curing process that avoided generating those byproducts, but not Safehold.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by phillies   » Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:05 pm

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In order that it may be smoked.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by isaac_newton   » Thu Jul 28, 2022 5:22 am

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phillies wrote:In order that it may be smoked.


BTW is it described as also being chewed?

sailers chewed tobacco - smoking not being a very positive activity on a wooden ship!!! :D
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Salisria   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:03 pm

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Wads of chewleaf (presumably a variety of tobacco preferable for chewing rather than smoking, much as there are different varieties of apples suitable for eating, baking, and cindering and different peanuts are used for roasting and boiling) and spittoons are both mentioned fairly early on.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Dave   » Wed Jan 15, 2025 5:39 am

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Tobacco is a useful model organism, that is used for plant molecular and pathogenic research. Considering they're terraforming a new world with pre-existing life, having model organisms is not optional.

Tobacco, having been used for pathogenic research for centuries by the point of Safehold would be invaluable to catalogue native plant diseases and research countermeasures to allow terran species to survive on Safehold. Likewise, with the amount of GMO plantlife Shan-Wei introduced, like Oil Trees, the molecular research would've been fairly important too, to easily test and iterate the DNA sequences that are ultimately intended for plants with longer life-cycles than tobacco.

It seems fairly likely to me that Tobacco was therefore brought along for on-site research purposes, and maybe someone or multiple someones have smuggled some off for personal use and planted it on Safehold. At which point, the genie was out of the bottle even before Creation. At that point, you might as well write the writ to simply inform of the dangers of tobacco, as well as other utilities Safeholdians may find useful, such an easily sourced pesticide (even if you aren't using it to protect crops, it's good to keep bugs out of your house although it won't last too long), and it has some medical uses to boot (e.g. treating insect bites as a cheap antiseptic, topical antiparasitic for people and livestock)

One other use I can see for tobacco is for soil remediation. Safehold is a different planet from Earth, and we don't really know what 'unconsecrated land' really means aside from the presence of native pre-Creation species. If unconsecrated Safeholdian soil is rich in heavy metals, tobacco is an excellent low-tech way to remove that from the soil. Tobacco loves to suck heavy metals out of soil to act as pesticides to keep its own leaves uneaten and is therefore useful for soil remediation/consecration.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by EKB   » Thu Jan 16, 2025 10:33 pm

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I suspect that tobacco use had become more popular on Earth as the Gbaba closed in. It really is an effective (if not safe) palliative for stress and people would figure that they weren't going to live long enough for smoking-induced cancer to get them anyway.

So the Archangels might well have had a more relaxed attitude toward tobacco than we do today, with various reasons for deciding "Let the inhabitants have this pleasure while warning against it as a venial sin because of the health effects."

I was more surprised to see "cherrybean tea" show up in the later books. Before then I had figured the Archangels to have pulled off a "Non-alcoholic boiling-water drinks are good, but with tea and herb-teas being much preferable to coffee from our perspective. We really do want to avoid any 'By the Beans of Java my mind is set in motion' effects here. So we will just have coffee quietly not happen. People will drink tea and hot chocolate instead."
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Daryl   » Fri Jan 17, 2025 3:39 am

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Nicitine itself (by itself) has a couple of attributes.
!. It is one of the most addictive substances around. Who knows if an addict smuggled 5 mil of seeds along.
@. Quite apart from the damage done by combusting, nicotine itself is very damaging in a cardiovascular sense. Among other things it causes cardiomyapathy.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Julia Minor   » Fri Feb 07, 2025 10:05 am

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EKB wrote:I suspect that tobacco use had become more popular on Earth as the Gbaba closed in. It really is an effective (if not safe) palliative for stress and people would figure that they weren't going to live long enough for smoking-induced cancer to get them anyway.


Merlin has said that the Federation medical nanotech he injected the Inner Circle with means they'll never get cancer (among other health issues). We don't know just when the no-cancer part got added to the nanites, but it's entirely possible that before the Gbaba showed up the only concern about tobacco usage was about the smell and mess, not health concerns.

The Adams and Eves had their medical nanotech, so they were still immune to cancer, but may still have had the psychological/physical need to smoke. Making them cold-turkey could have caused problems for the initial colonization, and of course none of their kids would inherit those nanites and would be vulnerable to COPD or cancer. Pasquale or one of his underlings probably figured the best compromise was to discourage tobacco use but not ban it outright. I would love to know just how he justified the "creation" of tobacco, though.
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Re: Why does Safehold have tobacco?
Post by Louis R   » Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:05 pm

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In addition to the practical uses described by Dave, nicotine does make a rather effective pesticide. So it's not unlikely that there are prescribed uses for it.

Also, like many similar questions, this on is predicated on the assumption that the Archangels actually knew what they were doing [anyone feel like defending _that_ proposition?]. There was probably a presumption on their part that the attitude being inculcated to the "don'ts" in the Writ would extend, by and large, to the "shouldn'ts", and probably to the "shoulds" as well, so very few if any would encounter the medical issues associated with tobacco use and therefore there was no reason not to take advantage of it if it was useful.

BTW, it is also an unfounded assumption that under the _original_ plan only the 1st generation colonists would have the advantage of nanites. The regression of technology was only supposed to last a few generations, and IIRC the enclaves were supposed to, among other things, discreetly maintain health and educational levels as high as possible consistent with staying under cover for that time.

Julia Minor wrote:
EKB wrote:I suspect that tobacco use had become more popular on Earth as the Gbaba closed in. It really is an effective (if not safe) palliative for stress and people would figure that they weren't going to live long enough for smoking-induced cancer to get them anyway.


Merlin has said that the Federation medical nanotech he injected the Inner Circle with means they'll never get cancer (among other health issues). We don't know just when the no-cancer part got added to the nanites, but it's entirely possible that before the Gbaba showed up the only concern about tobacco usage was about the smell and mess, not health concerns.

The Adams and Eves had their medical nanotech, so they were still immune to cancer, but may still have had the psychological/physical need to smoke. Making them cold-turkey could have caused problems for the initial colonization, and of course none of their kids would inherit those nanites and would be vulnerable to COPD or cancer. Pasquale or one of his underlings probably figured the best compromise was to discourage tobacco use but not ban it outright. I would love to know just how he justified the "creation" of tobacco, though.
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