It is said that in Thuringia, over 1000 tons yearly of dried beetroot-leaves are passed off as tobacco. These leaves, and those of chicory and cabbage, are similarly employed in Magdeburg and the Palatinate. Many of the Vevey cigars of S. Germany are entirely composed of cabbage- and beetroot-leaves which have been steeped in tobacco-water for a long time. Other leaves, such as rhubarb, dock, burdock, and coltsfoot are also used. These are all principally for cigars. For smoking-tobacco, chamomile flowers, exhausted in water, then dyed and sweetened with logwood and liquorice, and dried, have been mixed with tobacco in such proportions as 70–80 per cent. In America, a specially-prepared brown paper, saturated with the juice expressed from tobacco-stems and other refuse, is most extensively used, not only for the “wrappers” of cigars, but also for “filling.” Various ground woods, starches, meals, and pigments are introduced into snuff.

A New York paper mentions that a great quantity of brown straw paper lately reached Havana, which was to be employed in the manufacture of Havana cigars. Straw paper impregnated with the juice of tobacco stalks is wound up with the leaf in such a way that it is often impossible to detect the adulteration. Dr. Jacobson, writing in the Industrie BlÄtter, remarks that there is no difficulty in escaping detection, if the paper be specially prepared for the purpose out of suitable raw materials. It has long been known that cigar paper soaked in a solution of soluble glass gives forth no smell of paper on being burnt.

Patent No. 210,538, issued from the United States Patent Office, December 3, 1878, states the ingredients of a “substitute” to be—spikenard, red clover, hyssop, hops, slippery-elm bark, tarred rope, pennyroyal, mullein leaves, kinnikinic, wild cherry bark, and ginseng. This is an ingenious combination intended to approach in effect, appearance, and aroma, tobacco; and in so far it might be said to be a success: as mullein leaves are reputed to be feebly narcotic, hops are known to possess anodyne properties, clover and hyssop are pectoral in effect, and slippery-elm febrifuge. Ginseng is aromatic and pungent, and has a great reputation among the Chinese as a stimulant and restorative. The tarred rope, we presume, is intended to add to the pyrognostic value of the mixture. The great point in selecting material for the fabrication of a mixture of this description is to get leaves containing a fair percentage of nitrate of potass, as does tobacco; on this depends its pyrognostic value, and that, next to aroma, is everything.

“Tobacco, like those who smoke it, is credited with many sins of which it is guiltless. The ‘loss of health’ so often laid at its door is probably due in many instances not to tobacco itself, but to some villainous compound bearing its name. A story told by the principal of the laboratory of the Inland Revenue Department in his report for the past year shows how easily this may happen. The supervisor at Birmingham, observing that an article was being sold at a very cheap rate in packets, under the name of ‘smoking mixture,’ sent a sample to the Inland Revenue laboratory for examination, and it being found to contain a large proportion of vegetable matter resembling the broken-up heads of camomile flowers, further inquiry led to the discovery of the manufactory. The process of manufacture consisted in exhausting the bitter principle of camomile flower-heads with water, and then dyeing and sweetening them with a solution of logwood and liquorice, which brought them, when dried, somewhat to the colour of tobacco. The heads, when broken up, were then mixed with from 20 to 30 per cent. of cut tobacco, according to the price at which the mixture was to be sold. The mixture was supplied to retailers in packets labelled ‘The New Smoking Mixture, Analysed and Approved,’ and as agencies had already been established in several towns, an extensive trade would no doubt soon have arisen had the manufactory not been suppressed at an early stage of its existence.”

The United States Consul at Smyrna puts the following statement in his report of January 15, 1883.

Since the establishment of the tobacco monopoly in Turkey, snuff may be said to be one of the several articles that undergo the most unscrupulous adulteration. Owing to the high amount of duties imposed on tobacco by the Turkish Government, and the large profits licensed manufacturers expect to make on the same, the poorer classes cannot afford to use the products of doubtful purity coming from the factories, and so are altogether at the mercy of the clandestine manufacturer and retailer, who, in order to make the most he can of his vile industry, adulterates his snuff to such an extent that it can be safely said that his products contain on an average from 60 to 70 per cent. of inferior Persian tobacco (tumbeki), fragments of country tobacco leaf, and tobacco of cigarettes picked up in the streets by beggars, the 30 to 40 per cent. consisting of walnut sawdust, terra umbra, fine sifted sand, and scum of lead (lead oxide), covered with inferior black writing-ink.

The snuff is manufactured in Smyrna, as follows:

The conscientious manufacturer uses Persian hookah tobacco (tumbeki) and the fragments of country tobacco-leaf coloured with black ink. These tobaccos, ground as fine as possible and mixed with grape molasses, are put in a covered barrel to ferment. Two or three days later the snuff is taken out and spread in the sun to dry partly, and then rubbed with the hands and passed through iron wire sieves to be granulated.

The product is afterwards scented with powdered orris root, tonka beans, and geranium oil; the superior qualities are scented with essences of roses and jessamine and put up in packages.

The adulterated article is manufactured in the same manner with the addition of the above-named substances.

The only persons using genuine snuff in this city are the Catholic priests, who import it directly from France, Italy, Spain and Holland, and enjoy the privilege of paying no custom-house duties.