Doctrine and Covenants Section 89, dated February 1833, records a revelation Joseph Smith received in Kirtland, Ohio, prompted according to church history by his wife Emma's concern over the mess and health effects of tobacco spit and chewed left by men meeting in the Smiths' home for church business. The text itself is framed cautiously, introduced as 'a word of wisdom, for the benefit of the council of high priests... and also the saints in Zion' given 'not by commandment or constraint,' and prohibits wine and strong drink except for sacramental use, tobacco, and 'hot drinks,' while recommending herbs, fruit, and sparing use of meat, and promising health and, in a frequently quoted closing verse, that the obedient will 'run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.'
For the movement's first several decades, observance was uneven and treated broadly as the counsel its own text described rather than a strict test of standing. That changed decisively under church president Heber J. Grant in the early twentieth century, who campaigned to make full observance, including abstention from coffee and tea, an actual requirement for temple admission and, eventually, for baptism and full church membership standing, a shift formalized through the 1920s and 1930s. The word 'commandment' is now used for the Word of Wisdom in ordinary church usage despite the revelation's own explicit disclaimer, an example of how practice and later authoritative interpretation can move well beyond a text's original wording within Latter-day Saint doctrinal development.