Tobacco is used in several distinct ways: smoked in cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and hookahs; placed in the mouth or nose as smokeless products like dip, snus, and snuff; heated electronically in newer devices; and, outside of personal consumption, processed for industrial and ceremonial purposes. Cigarettes remain by far the most common form worldwide, but the landscape of tobacco use has diversified significantly. About one in five adults globally still uses tobacco or nicotine products, with men (32.5%) using at far higher rates than women (6.6%) as of 2024.
Cigarettes, Cigars, and Pipes
Smoking is the most familiar form of tobacco use. A cigarette is tobacco leaves wrapped in paper, sometimes with a filter and chemical additives. You light one end and inhale smoke through the other. Combustion is the key feature here: the tobacco burns at high temperatures, producing thousands of chemical byproducts in the smoke. Standard packs contain 20 cigarettes, and this format dominates tobacco consumption in the United States and most of the world.
Cigars come in three main sizes. Traditional or premium cigars are the largest, made of whole tobacco leaves rolled tightly together. Cigarillos are mid-sized, and filtered “little cigars” closely resemble cigarettes in shape and size but are wrapped in tobacco leaf rather than paper. Pipe tobacco is burned in a bowl and the smoke drawn through a stem. All of these deliver nicotine through combustion and inhalation, though the amount varies with how deeply and frequently you inhale.
Hookah and Waterpipe Smoking
Hookah smoking uses a specially prepared tobacco mixture called mu’assel, which is made by fermenting tobacco with molasses, vegetable glycerol, and fruit or candy flavorings. The result is a moist, sticky product that sits in a bowl at the top of the waterpipe. Charcoal heats the mu’assel, and the smoke passes through a water chamber before reaching the user through a long hose. The water cools the smoke, making it feel smoother, but it does not filter out the harmful compounds in any meaningful way.
Hookah goes by many names depending on the region: shisha, narghile, goza, argileh, or ghalyan in Iran. Sessions typically last 30 to 60 minutes, during which a user can inhale a much larger volume of smoke than from a single cigarette.
Smokeless Tobacco Products
Smokeless tobacco is placed in the mouth or nose rather than burned. Most forms involve tucking the product between the gum and cheek or lip, where nicotine absorbs through the lining of the mouth. There are two broad categories sold in the U.S.: chewing tobacco and snuff (including snus).
Chewing tobacco comes as loose leaf, a compressed plug, or a twisted rope of cured tobacco. You place a wad in your cheek and chew it periodically. Moist snuff, commonly called “dip,” is finely cut tobacco that sits between the gum and lip without much chewing. Snus, a product with Scandinavian origins, looks similar but comes in small pre-portioned pouches, making it more discreet. Dry snuff is a powdered tobacco that users typically sniff into the nostrils, though this form is far less common today. Some newer products dissolve entirely in the mouth, made from ground or powdered tobacco.
Nicotine from smokeless tobacco absorbs more slowly than from cigarettes, but the total amount of nicotine your body takes in can be comparable. Research comparing the two found that cigarettes deliver a faster spike in blood nicotine levels, while snus and dip produce a more gradual rise that reaches similar overall exposure. The speed of that initial hit is one reason cigarettes tend to be more habit-forming, but smokeless products still deliver substantial nicotine.
Heat-Not-Burn Devices
A newer category of tobacco product heats real tobacco without setting it on fire. These devices, sometimes called heated tobacco products, use an electronic element or a carbon tip to warm dried tobacco to a temperature well below combustion. The result is an aerosol rather than smoke, and the tobacco stick doesn’t produce ash or burn down in size.
One design authorized for sale in the U.S. uses an electronic unit with a ceramic blade that pierces a small tobacco stick and heats it from the inside. Another older design lights a carbon tip wrapped in glass fibers, which then heats surrounding tobacco. Both differ fundamentally from e-cigarettes, which contain no actual tobacco leaf. E-cigarettes instead vaporize a liquid made from nicotine (usually derived from tobacco), glycerin, propylene glycol, and flavorings. Over 100 million people worldwide now use e-cigarettes, including an estimated 15 million adolescents aged 13 to 15.
Ceremonial and Traditional Use
Long before tobacco became a commercial product, many Indigenous peoples of North America used it as a sacred medicinal plant. Traditional tobacco played a role in ceremonial and cultural practices meant to promote wellness for individuals and communities. This included offerings, prayer, and communal pipe ceremonies. The tobacco used in these contexts was typically a different variety from commercial cigarettes, grown and prepared by the community itself.
Colonization and forced assimilation disrupted these practices. Commercial tobacco products were introduced into ceremonial settings as a replacement for sacred tobacco, blurring the line between cultural use and addiction. Today, many Indigenous communities are actively working to reclaim traditional tobacco practices and distinguish them clearly from recreational or habitual smoking.
Industrial and Agricultural Applications
The tobacco plant also has uses that have nothing to do with nicotine consumption. Tobacco waste, the leftover material from manufacturing, finds its primary application in agriculture as a source of fertilizers and natural pesticides. The plant contains bioactive compounds that researchers have explored for medical applications, including compounds used to produce antioxidants, proteins, and other substances with potential health benefits. In the energy sector, the plant’s fibrous material (lignocellulose) can be processed into biofuels and chemical platform compounds, positioning tobacco as a possible crop for renewable energy production.