Premium Tobacco is Traditional Tobacco, and more

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Football season is in full swing with all levels from middle school to the pros now playing regular games. As per multiple traditions, premium cigars will be smoked in celebration. It isn't only sporting traditions that utilize premium tobacco, nor are such traditions confined to the Americas!

According to the Good Medicine Keepers, honoring the sacred tradition of tobacco, "traditional tobacco holds deep cultural significance for American Indian communities. ... Unlike commercial tobacco, traditional tobacco is not mass-produced or chemically altered. It is grown, harvested, and prepared with care, often incorporating other sacred herbs and plants."

This may sound much like the definition of premium tobacco used by those in the premium cigar industry and Judge Mehta. Premium tobacco is whole-leaf tobacco that is carefully grown, fermented, aged, and then handcrafted without the use of chemical additives. Premium tobacco products contain only natural tobacco, water, and vegetable gum. These products are crafted by hand instead of mass produced by machines. (Tobacco Law Blog)

Traditional, or premium, tobacco has been gathered by Indigenous groups for medicinal, spiritual, and ceremonial needs for centuries. "In the Peruvian Amazon, the geographical region believed to be tobacco’s historical birthplace, the plant is described as a potent medicinal plant, used topically or via ingestion to treat a variety of health conditions."

In the Philippines, the National Tobacco Administration is investigating uses for tobacco far beyond traditional medicinal uses! These include use of tobacco and its by products as natural substitutes for pesticides and fertilizers, food (human) and feed (animal). There is also the development of wood, pulp, and fiber products from tobacco.

Those of us who enjoy premium cigars know that premium tobacco has been cultivated mainly for its leaves. However, in the Philippines at least, there is an "emphasis on the development of other products from tobacco." Former NTA Administrator, Joaquin T. Ortega, observes, "with the development of other tobacco products, tobacco may still prove to be the crop of the future."