Drinking Smoke: The Tobacco Syndemic in Oceania

2. Tobacco as a Comestible

22 Chapter 2 Tobacco as a Comestible The day I first arrived on Sabarl I received a most extraordinary greeting. We had anchored the small mission outboard on the north side of the island and crossed on foot at a narrow point, descending into Maho by a back path. We were spotted first by the elderly women who perched in the sun behind their houses, and they flocked to meet us. From a distance they seemed very fragile, but also aggressive. Suddenly the smallest and most ancient one seized my arm and began to suck at my breast. She was repeating over and over some urgent phrase; her small eyes were terribly intense. I was embarrassed and also—How could I explain it to myself?— ashamed. All these venerable women who had so much to teach me, behaving as insistent supplicants. Later I learned that what they were saying was “Tinau, tinau, apayebo”: “My mother, my mother, give me a smoke” and, in the language of gestures, “Tobacco is my mother’s milk.” —Debbora Battaglia, On the Bones of the Serpent At first blush, this expression—“tobacco is my mother’s milk”—may seem odd or even nonsensical. But I believe it encodes several important truths about the place of and the uses for tobacco, not just for a few old women on Sabarl, but also for men and women of all ages in much of Oceania . To equate tobacco with mother’s milk is to emphasize several things at once: tobacco is something essential to life; tobacco is something one obtains from those with whom one has or wishes to have a close relationship; and tobacco is something that one ingests orally and takes into one’s body. Like mother’s milk, one “drinks smoke.” Tobacco as a Comestible 23 In a literal sense tobacco is not essential to life, but for a regular smoker in withdrawal from a lack of nicotine it may seem so. As the major alkaloid in tobacco, nicotine stimulates the central nervous system through neural receptors specific for nicotine and via dopaminergic pathways in the brain. It also creates an alerting pattern in the brain,1 and produces a significant rise in epinephrine and norepinephrine among many other physiological effects. Regular users of tobacco become habituated and develop a strong physical dependence. It is this physical dependence (some would call it “addiction”) that leads those habituated to tobacco to go to great lengths to acquire the drug when supplies run short. Tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, and a number of spices (e.g., ginger , nutmeg, and mace) all were labeled as “drug foods” in Sidney Mintz’s magisterial work on sugar (1985, 61). Interestingly, and long before Mintz penned his book, the people of most Pacific Island communities, once tobacco was introduced to them, quickly categorized this new substance as a comestible, a “food-class” thing. The primary purpose of this chapter is to draw upon the ethnographic and historical literature to document this fact, and therefore numerous examples will be presented in the pages to follow. Classification of tobacco as a comestible is highly pertinent to its central place in the contemporary tobacco syndemic in Oceania. One of the better examples of this classification of tobacco as a food/ beverage comes from Ujelang Atoll in the Marshall Islands: Cigarettes are a food-class item par excellence....So obvious is the connection between cigarettes and food-class objects that the request for edible items, cigarettes, is made without reference to the object itself. The context is enough to indicate that tobacco, not rice, is being requested. Americans query “would you like a drink?” to offer alcohol, whereas Marshallese say lewoj jidij kejem ‘give you a little food’ with a gift of tobacco. Marshallese sociability can be expressed through the exchange of a cigarette more easily than by giving any other food item. (Carucci 1987, 57) For Marshallese throughout the archipelago “cigarettes are regarded as food that nourishes and keeps up spirits as well as meeting all the criteria of shared food. Cigarettes, like food, are good to eat and good to share” (Nancy Pollock , personal communication). Pollock goes on to write: As my male Namu informants (and later informants in Wotje and Utrik) explained there are several dimensions to cigarettes that puts 24 Chapter 2 them in the same class as food—a cigarette is put in the mouth to be smoked...