World: Nicot’s Weed

As French Ambassador to Lisbon in 1561, Diplomat Jean Nicot failed in his mission to marry off Queen Catherine de Medici’s daughter to the King of Portugal. But Nicot won royal favor all the same by picking up in Lisbon an American weed whose most important ingredient today bears his name: nicotine. Ground into snuff, the tobacco successfully cured Queen Catherine of incessant headaches —it made her sneeze hard enough to clear out her sinuses.

Last week, still as enthused as Cather ine, the French government opened twelve months of festivities commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Nicot’s weed in France. As troubadours sang the glories of smoking to an audience of 800, the organizers of the meeting proudly an nounced the creation of a new chivalrous order of tobacco lovers — “The Compan ions of Jean Nicot,” whose members will be entitled to wear a lapel ribbon just like chevaliers of the Legion of Honor.

The one unblended note in the proceed ings was struck by a Parisian toxicologist who tactlessly told the audience that “un deniably, the immoderate use of tobacco threatens the health.” But although Presi dent Charles de Gaulle (once a two-pack-a-day man) long ago swore off smoking on doctors’ advice, the toxicologist’s speech, unlike the rest of the festivities, was not broadcast over France’s govern ment-owned radio-TV network. For to bacco has been a government monopoly in France since 1811, when Napoleon noticed an ostentatiously bejeweled woman at a Tuileries ball and then discovered that her husband was a tobacco merchant. That very night. Napoleon is supposed to have signed the decree nationalizing the weed, and a golden harvest has poured into France’s treasury ever since. Ex plained one candid official last week: “We rake in $500 million a year in tobacco taxes — that’s why we’re celebrating.”