A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises a chamber for the tobacco from which a thin hollow stem (shank) emerges, ending in a mouthpiece. Pipes can range from very simple machine-made briar models to highly prized hand-made artisanal implements made by renowned pipemakers, which are often very expensive collector's items. Pipe smoking is the oldest known traditional form of tobacco smoking.
A bong is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances. In the bong shown in the photo, the smoke flows from the lower port on the left to the upper port on the right.
A cigar is a tobacco product made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of shapes and sizes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder leaf which holds the filler together, and a wrapper leaf, for appearance and flavor, which is often the highest quality leaf used. Often there will be a cigar band printed with the cigar manufacturer's logo. Modern cigars can come with two or more, highlighting special qualities such as age and origin of the tobaccos used.
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onwards but embedded itself in certain strata of a number of societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus. The World Health Organization states secondhand smoke—that from other people's smoking—causes 1.3 million of the 8 million annual deaths caused by smoking.
A hookah, shisha, or waterpipe is a single- or multi-stemmed instrument for heating or vaporizing and then smoking either tobacco, flavored tobacco, or sometimes cannabis, hashish and opium. The smoke is passed through a water basin—often glass-based—before inhalation.
Smoking fetishism is a sexual fetish based on the pulmonary consumption (smoking) of tobacco, most often via cigarettes, cigars, cannabis and also pipes, vapes, and hookahs to some extent. As a fetish, its mechanisms regard sexual arousal from the observation or imagination of a person smoking, sometimes including oneself.
A head shop is a retail outlet specializing in paraphernalia used for consumption of cannabis and tobacco and items related to cannabis culture and related countercultures. They emerged from the hippie counterculture in the late 1960s, and at that time, many of them had close ties to the anti-Vietnam War movement as well as groups in the marijuana legalization movement like LeMar, Amorphia, and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
A chillum, or chilam, is a straight conical smoking pipe traditionally made of either clay or a soft stone. It was used popularly in India in the eighteenth century and still often used to smoke marijuana. A small stone is often used as a stopper in the stem. The style of pipe spread to Africa, and has been known in the Americas since the 1960s. A chillum pipe is used in Rastafari rituals.
Tar is the name for the resinous, combusted particulate matter made by the burning of tobacco and other plant material in the act of smoking. Tar is toxic and damages the smoker's lungs over time through various biochemical and mechanical processes. Tar also damages the mouth by rotting and blackening teeth, damaging gums, and desensitizing taste buds. Tar includes the majority of mutagenic and carcinogenic agents in tobacco smoke. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), for example, are genotoxic and epoxidative.
A kiseru (煙管) is a Japanese smoking pipe, traditionally used for smoking kizami, a finely shredded tobacco product resembling hair.
A gravity bong, also known as a GB, bucket bong, grav, geeb, gibby, yoin, or ghetto bong, is a method of consuming smokable substances such as cannabis. The term describes both a bucket bong and a waterfall bong, since both use air pressure and water to draw smoke. A lung uses similar equipment but instead of water draws the smoke by removing a compacted plastic bag or similar from the chamber.
A midwakh' is a small smoking pipe of Arabian origin, in which dokha (دوخة), a sifted Iranian tobacco product mixed with aromatic leaf and bark herbs, is smoked. The bowl of a midwakh pipe is typically smaller than that of a traditional western tobacco pipe. It is usually loaded by dipping the bowl into a container of dokha flakes.
Cannabis smoking is the inhalation of smoke or vapor released by heating the flowers, leaves, or extracts of cannabis and releasing the main psychoactive chemical, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is absorbed into the bloodstream via the lungs. Archaeological evidence indicates cannabis with high levels of THC was being smoked at least 2,500 years ago. As of 2021, cannabis is the most commonly consumed federally illegal drug in the United States, with 36.4 million people consuming it monthly.
An opium den was an establishment in which opium was sold and smoked. Opium dens were prevalent in many parts of the world in the 19th century, most notably China, Southeast Asia, North America, and France. Throughout the West, opium dens were frequented by and associated with the Chinese because the establishments were usually run by Chinese mobsters, who supplied the opium and prepared it for visiting non-Chinese smokers. Most opium dens kept a supply of opium paraphernalia such as the pipes and lamps that were necessary to smoke the drug. Patrons would recline to hold the long opium pipes over oil lamps that would heat the drug until it vaporized, allowing the smoker to inhale the vapors. Opium dens in China were frequented by all levels of society, and their opulence or simplicity reflected the financial means of the patrons. In urban areas of the United States, particularly on the West Coast, there were opium dens that mirrored the best to be found in China, with luxurious trappings and female attendants. For the working class, there were many low-end dens with sparse furnishings.
A smoking pipe is used to taste the smoke of a burning substance; most common is a tobacco pipe. Pipes are commonly made from briar, heather, corn, meerschaum, clay, cherry, glass, porcelain, ebonite and acrylic.
A one-hitter is typically a slender pipe with a screened narrow bowl designed for a single inhalation, or "hit", of smoke or vapor from a small serving of heated cannabis flower, tobacco leaf or other dry, sifted herbal preparation. It is distinguished from western-style large-bowl pipes designed for strong tobaccos that are burned hot and tasted but not inhaled. Instead, by properly distancing a lighter flame below the opening, inhalant users operate at vaporization temperatures, minimizing combustion waste and toxicity.
An opium pipe is a pipe designed for the evaporation and inhalation of opium. True opium pipes allow for the opiate to be vaporized while being heated over a special oil lamp known as an opium lamp. It is thought that this manner of "smoking" opium began in the seventeenth century when a special pipe was developed that vaporized opium instead of burning it.
Smoking is a practice in which a substance is combusted and the resulting smoke is typically inhaled to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream of a person. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have been rolled with a small rectangle of paper into an elongated cylinder called a cigarette. Other forms of smoking include the use of a smoking pipe or a bong.
The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in the Americas in shamanistic rituals. With the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco quickly spread. The modernization of farming equipment and manufacturing increased the availability of cigarettes following the reconstruction era in the United States. Mass production quickly expanded the scope of consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s.
Depictions of tobacco smoking in art date back at least to the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, where smoking had religious significance. The motif occurred frequently in painting of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age, in which people of lower social class were often shown smoking pipes. In European art of the 18th and 19th centuries, the social location of people – largely men – shown as smoking tended to vary, but the stigma attached to women who adopted the habit was reflected in some artworks. Art of the 20th century often used the cigar as a status symbol, and parodied images from tobacco advertising, especially of women. Developing health concerns around tobacco smoking also influenced its artistic representation.
