page_title: Tobacco-Free Pharmacies
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Tobacco-Free Pharmacies / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement for Grimault's Indian Cigarettes, published in the Ceylon Standard, June 8 1907. "Recommended by Medical Authorities for the immediate relief of Asthma and Bronchial trouble, Hay Fever, Laryngitis and Irritation of the air passages."
context_page_description: Tobacco-Free Pharmacies is a term used to refer to retail pharmacies where the sale of tobacco products is not available. Outside the United States, it is rare for pharmacy stores to sell cigarettes and similar products on the same premises as over-the-counter drugs and prescription medication. Anti-tobacco campaigners advocate the removal of tobacco from pharmacies due to the health risks associated with smoking and the apparent contradiction of selling cigarettes alongside smoking cessation products and asthma medication. Some pharmaceutical retailers counter this argument by reasoning that by selling tobacco, they are more readily able to offer to customers advice and products for quitting smoking.
context_section_description: Since its introduction into Europe (and growth as a cash crop in the colonies of North America), tobacco has a long history of being used as a herbal remedy. Around 1560, Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Lisbon, popularised the use of tobacco leaves as a cure for carcinoma and ringworm in the court of King Francis II of France. The Spanish botanist and physician Nicolás Monardes described the medicinal uses of tobacco in his 1565 publication Joyfull Newes out of the New-Found World.  In 17th-century France, the leaves of the tobacco plant were thought to have wide-ranging medicinal properties and physicians used it to treat bubonic plague, asthma, cancer, migraine and for pain relief during childbirth. In 1635 a French law was passed limiting the sale of tobacco exclusively to apothecaries.
caption: A 1907 cigarette advertisement promoting supposed medicinal benefits of smoking, as was common at the time (these, however, are cannabis cigarettes)
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