Only a portion of the tobacco inside a cigarette comes from the leaf of a tobacco plant. A significant amount of the shredded brown innards of most modern cigarettes is a paper product called ...

In a somewhat more benign development, researchers in Germany have developed tobacco plants that also can't stop growing. Under normal conditions, the tobacco plant has a rather uninspiring lifespan.

Ancient North Americans started using tobacco around 12,500 to 12,000 years ago, roughly 9,000 years before the oldest indications that they smoked the plant in pipes, a new study finds.

Genetic engineers in Illinois have designed tobacco plants that grow as much as 40% larger than usual. If similar changes can be made to soybeans or potatoes, it could increase food supplies ...