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Man spent 40 years perfecting a lettuce cigarette

Ellsworth Toohey
Jan 14, 2026
∙ Paid

New Africa/shutterstock.com

In 1959, a colleague challenged New Jersey pharmacist Puzant Torigian to make a nicotine-free cigarette. He became obsessed. Over the following years, he tested over 200 plants — kale, grape leaves, cabbage, spinach, carrot tops, peanut plants, rhubarb, sunflower, even tomato leaves — before settling on the winner: lettuce. Wh…

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