Thinking about the various natural drugs in terms of geography and value. Drugs intrinsically have more value than wheat or corn, just as entertainment automatically has more value than facts.
First distinction:
Tobacco and tea and coffee and marijuana are crops.
Alcohol is a disease, resulting from spoilage in any sugary or starchy plant.
Anyone can make alcohol accidentally, and it takes only a little skill and patience to make drinkable alcohol. Every crop prefers certain soils and climates, and requires real work and knowledge to breed and cultivate and harvest.
Second distinction:
Among the crops, coffee and tobacco prefer hot climates and particular soils, so their supply is naturally limited and their sale requires organized shipping across national boundaries.
Marijuana grows everywhere, and teas are a broad category of plants with different preferences. The most valuable teas have been cultivated in specific places where generations of farmers developed skills. (Strictly speaking marijuana is mint, so it would belong in the teas except for the preferred method of use.)
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There was one notable exception to the tropicality of tobacco. Connecticut became a major tobacco producer soon after the Mayflower, and continued until VERY recently. 400 years of continuous farming and profit, now gone.
Connecticut specialized in Shade Tobacco for cigar wrappers. The alluvial soil in the center of the state was peculiarly suitable for this variety, and the summer was long enough and hot enough for the crop.
This 1953 publication from the CT state agriculture department is well written and informative, typical of pre-modern unbiased science. It shows the intensive individual care justified by a high value crop. Reminds me of the ice industry in some ways.
Raised seedbeds:
Sowing:
Shading:
Curing:
Fastening each leaf to the drying apparatus:
Production was already starting to fade in 1953. The CT industry was convenient to the main market in NYC. Cigars were never very popular elsewhere. Among neighbors and co-workers in the midwest, I’d guess that only 5% of men liked cigars, at a time when EVERYONE was smoking cigarettes. As even New York turned more OCD in the 80s, cigars lost their remaining market.
Via Wikipedia, commercial production is down to just 2000 acres, and the last real producer ceased business in 2017.
Polistra's Mill 