Thanks for your dedicated words, Alcuin, your arguments are as precise and as clean as a blade in the morning
Your speculation about that Saruman started to smoke even BEFORE 2851 is interesting. Myself, I never thought of it (not being smoker at all). What concerns me is, how Saruman gained access to the weed, since he didn't have yet established his agents in the Shire. According to Appendix B in LotR:
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2953 - Last meeting of the White Council. They debate the Rings. Saruman feigns that he has discovered that the One Ring has passed down Anduin to the Sea. Saruman withdraws to Isengard, which he takes as his own, and fortifies it. Being afraid and jealous of Gandalf he sets spies to watch all his movements and notes his interest in the Shire. He soon begins to keep agents in Bree and the South-farthing.
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According to this, Saruman now BEGINS to keep agents in the Shire (and Bree). However, as you said before, in UT we read that Saruman visited the Shire by himself before he recognized that the halflings noticed him and he stopped it. I'd guess from then on he might start to use the agents instead of himself.
If we take this as possible, then we can take for granted that Saruman visited the Shire - and thus, first smoked - before 2953 (be it 100 years before 2953, or one year before it). Of course, that's no surprise. The question is, how long is that? He "needed supplies": and we have some of 100 years between 2851(when he first spoke about the leaf with Gandalf, and in contrary to Alcuin, I think that here is the point when Saruman even started to think about smoking, but I might be as well mistaken). Anyway: I'm not a smoker, but I don't think that Saruman would have stayed without a smoke, once he started to smoke regularly, for a period of time equaling years or even centuries
If he started to smoke, let's say, in 2855, this would mean almost hundred years before he set agents in the South Farthing. This would either mean that Saruman, for example, came to the Shire every 10 years and very inconspicously bought (or ordered) a few tons of the leaf, or that he really started to smoke not too long before 2953 (from when on he had still supply).