RYOT

The year was 1590 and Pope Urban VII may have had the shortest papacy of any pope--he died of malaria two weeks after the death of his successor--but he nonetheless managed to issue the first anti-smoking edict in history during his brief reign. Anyone who "took tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose" would risk excommunication. The law remained on the books in various forms until 1724, when Pope Benedict XIII, a smoker himself, repealed it.

In 1635, King Louis XIII of France restricted the sale of tobacco to apothecaries and required customers to furnish a legitimate prescription from a doctor. A snuff user himself, he repealed the restrictions two years later.

Flash forward to 1899. Meet Lucy Page Gaston, a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union She founded the Anti-Cigarette League of America, which would soon boast multiple chapters throughout the United States and Canada. The group’s popularity reflected a growing sentiment that tobacco use—and especially cigarette smoking—was a gateway to other immoral behaviors, particularly among young ladies. Between 1890 and 1930, the sale, manufacture and possession of cigarettes were made illegal in 15 U.S. states.