Smoking?

[PastMember]

Do the Pernese smoke?  tobacco or otherwise?  Would they have stuff like pipes, or things more akin to cigarettes?  Or nothing at all?

[PastMember]

The DLG states that colonists had a nicotine-free substitute, but no details on what it was, if I recall correctly.  I'll double check later.

From Encyclopedia.com:

The tobacco plant is a coarse, large-leaved perennial, usually cultivated as an annual, grown from seed in cold frames or hotbeds and then transplanted to the field. Tobacco requires a warm climate and rich, well-drained soil. The plant is susceptible to numerous bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases (e.g., the tobacco mosaic virus) and is attacked by several species of worms, beetles, and moths. The characteristics of many of the named grades depend upon the regional environmental conditions and cultivation techniques. Tobacco leaves are picked as they mature, or they are harvested together with the stalk.

    Tobacco leaves are cured, fermented, and aged to develop aroma and reduce the harsh, rank odor and taste of fresh leaves. Fire-curing, dating from pre-Columbian times, is done by drying the leaves in smoke; in air-curing, the leaves are hung in well-ventilated structures; in flue-curing, used for over half the total crop, the leaves are dried by radiant heat from flues or pipes connected to a furnace. The cured tobacco is graded, bunched, and stacked in piles called bulks or in closed containers for active fermentation and aging. Most commercial tobaccos are blends of several types, and flavorings (e.g., maple and other sugars) are often added.

I know tobacco is very labor intensive, and I don't think there'd be a market for it.  Since it wasn't a foodstuff, had little medicinal value another plant couldn't supply, and causes more health problems than an agricultural colony would want, I doubt it was imported.  I don't think it's like cotton (which "burns" the soil and has to be crop rotated or ruin the land).

However, that doesn't mean there isn't a native plant that is used in a similar manner.  After all, Pern produces the fellis tree, whose juice is the fandom answer to morphine for healer posts.

Any input, ideas, discussion folks?  This is an area where I don't recall the books concentrating on, but I could have missed it as a small detail that didn't seem important when I was reading.

[PastMember]

I'm no major expert on anything, but I don't think it was ever mentioned in the books. It seems kind of like the religion thing, where it just isn't mentioned and they don't really smoke casue it's not be a fishal to your health to be inhaling smoke..of any kind :razberry: Ickyness, but then again I may have compleatly missed something casue I'm human (I think....)

[PastMember]

I seem to remember some little excerpt in one of the books about smoking something that wasn't a real cigarette. I can't even remember what book it was in.

I would assume since it wasn't mentioned it didn't occur. The colonists wanted a clean start and I don't think they would have brought something like that with them and I really don't think they would have tried to save it from Thread.