Q: Is Pipeweed Supposed to be Marijuana or Tobacco?
ANSWER: You need look no further than the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings to see that Pipe-weed is nothing more than tobacco:
2. Concerning Pipe-weed
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.
Nicotiana is a genus (a class) of herbs and shrubs within the Nightshade family of plants. Members of the Nicotiana class are native or indigenous to southwest Africa, the South Pacific, and North and South America. Jean Nicot was a French diplomat who brought tobacco, an American member of the Nicotiana genus, to the French court from Portugal in 1561. The genus was named for him.
Tolkien was an avid tobacco user and pipe-smoker who was completely unaware of the carcinogenic risks entailed by smoking tobacco. Because he died in 1973, it seems unlikely to me that J.R.R. Tolkien would have been one of the millions of victims of the American tobacco companies who succumbed to the chemical manipulation of tobacco products to make them more addictive (and, perhaps in the process, more deadly). Tolkien had developed his lifelong habit long before American tobacco companies indulged themselves in that kind of market enslavement, although Tolkien might have had a few things to say on the subject had he become aware of it. He might rather seem like one of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain, perhaps, discovering Sauron’s betrayal.
Because The Lord of the Rings leaped into mass market popularity in the 1960s, its surge in popularity matched the surge in drug abuse among American and European teenagers and young adults. Hence, many people naturally associated Tolkien’s pipe-weed with marijuana but there is absolutely no connection. Tolkien never endorsed the drug sub-culture to my knowledge.
See also
Why Did Saruman Buy Supplies from the Shire?
Simple Hobbits Have Lots of Friends (Classic Essay)
Does Barliman Have A Beard and Other Important Fannish Issues (Classic Essay)
Hobbit Tales, or Never There and Back Again (Classic Essay)
Strange As News from Bree (Classic Essay)
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Tolkien was probably unaware of the link between smoking and cancer when he wrote LOTR (though the first findings to that effect date back as far as 1929), but he must have become aware of it before he died.
Health warnings were appearing on packets of cigarettes in the UK from 1971 onward. They perhaps weren’t required on packets of pipe tobacco, but I very much doubt that JRRT was ignorant of their existence or their implications.