It is weird to think about that cigarettes used to get people high. Before any kind of government control, cigarettes were made with real natural tobacco. It was several times stronger than anything today. That stuff would put you on your butt. Even my mother told me that cigarettes used to make her dizzy. That would be early 1900s. Similar to smoking a joint.
The tobacco we smoke today is so diluted and processed it is no comparison to what our parents and grandparents smoked.
As a youngster, I could go over to the tobacco barns and scoop up 'barn trash'--bits of tobacco leaves that had come off while stripping tobacco (removing the leaves, by grade,from the air cured plant). That definitely had a different flavor than 'tailor mades' (storebought cigarettes) but mainly being bits of ground leaves and bright leaf, was similar to the buzz off a full flavor cigarette, maybe just a little more intense.
There is more tar and nicotine in the leaves closer to the top of the plant (near the blossoms), and those leaves actually get sticky from the resins. 'Tips' were mostly used for chewing tobacco and some cigars, blended in cut filler.
The intermediate grade of leaf, 'dark leaf', has more nicotine and tar than bright leaf, but less than the tips, and was used for blending in cigarette tobacco or in cigars.
The first time I flew to the East Coast after they stopped having smoking sections on planes, after a layover for a connecting flight in Minneapolis with no smoking in the airport, I rented a car out of BWI (it was a pretty hefty surcharge if you smoked in the car, so I didn't). By the time I got to my destination, back in the days when I was a pack a day smoker, I had been between 18 and 20 hours without a cigarette.
I recall getting a buzz off the first one--actually a little dizzy.
