King Charles I in History of Drugs in America
King Charles I (1600–1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1625 to 1649. His reign ended with his execution by forces loyal to Parliament in the English Civil War.
In 1633, Charles increased taxes on tobacco, justifying the move by condemning tobacco's impact on English society. He said:
"The plant or drug called tobacco, scarce known to this nation in former times, was in this age first brought into this realm in small quantity, as medicine, and so used [...] but in the process of time, to satisfy the inordinate appetites of men and women it hath been brought in great quantity, and taken for wantonness and excess, provoking them to drinking and other incontinence, to the great impairing of their healths and depraving them of their manners, so that the care which His Majesty hath of his people hath enforced him to think of some means of preventing of the evil consequences of this immoderate use thereof."