 Like tea, coffee and opium, tobacco was just one of many intoxicants that was originally used as a form of medicine.Tobacco was introduced around 1600 by French merchants in what today is modern-day Gambia and Senegal.At the same time, caravans from Morocco brought tobacco to the areas around Timbuktu, and the Portuguese brought the commodity (and the plant) to southern Africa, establishing the popularity of tobacco throughout all of Africa by the 1650s.