History of tobacco brought to Spain for its flowers, but "Now we use it to a greater extent for the sake of its virtues than for its beauty". John Hawkins was the first to bring tobacco seeds to England. William Harrison's "English Chronology" mentions tobacco smoking in the country as of 1573, before Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first "Virginia" tobacco to Europe from the Roanoke Colony, referring to it as "tobah" as early as 1578. In 1595 Anthony Chute published "Tabaco", which repeated earlier arguments about the benefits of the plant and emphasised the health-giving properties of pipe-smoking. The importation of tobacco
Tobacco in the United States signed into law, which raised the federal tax rate for cigarettes on April 1, 2009 from $0.39 per pack to $1.01 per pack. 443,000 Americans die of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke each year. For every smoking-related death, another 20 people suffer with a smoking-related disease. (2011) California's adult smoking rate has dropped nearly 50% since the state began the nation's longest-running tobacco control program in 1988. California saved $86 billion in health care costs by spending $1.8 billion on tobacco control, a 50:1 return on investment over its first 15 years of funding its tobacco control program. Some