Posted on 04/02/2009 3:47:57 PM PDT by Drango
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) For more than a century, the Sharp family of eastern North Carolina has grown tobacco, nicknamed the "golden leaf" for reasons that went beyond the cured plant's rich color.
`snip
"There's nothing else we're doing that comes even close to yielding the profits that tobacco yields."
For generations, tobacco growers were a protected class, as lawmakers across the South defended the golden leaf as stridently as politicians from Michigan and New York do automakers and Wall Street. It remains a huge business: The tobacco crop in North Carolina alone, where farmers produce nearly half the value of the entire U.S. output, was worth $686 million last year.
But lawmakers don't look out for Big Tobacco as they once did. In 2004, Congress eliminated a tobacco quota and price support system that dated to the Depression. ~snip In Raleigh, where there were spittoons North Carolina General Assembly until the mid-1980s and a smoky haze in the halls until a few years ago, House members voted this week in favor of a limited ban on public smoking. ~snip
It's a blow felt in the sandy soil fields of eastern North Carolina that are just OK for sweet potatoes, cotton, soybeans, but fantastic for tobacco. Production dropped by 27 percent to roughly 645 million pounds in 2005, the year after the quota system came to an end, but has slowly recovered in the past few years, boosted by exports and new marketing tactics.
~snip
Growers are also looking to sell their crop overseas, and a group called the U.S. Tobacco Cooperative that buys tobacco from 3,500 growers in five Southeast states has a unit that exports American leaf to China.
~snip
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Once the kiddies are good n addicted, I like to burn them with a cigarette as a brand just so I don’t waste time trying to addict the ones I already addicted.
How right you are. I’m growing my own tobacco. Easy to do. Curing is another story.
Are you really a FReeper or did some elitist yuppy hijack your account?
Same here, I have fifty plants started. Curing OTOH...
People sell anything on Ebay these days.
Must be from those drama novels they sell at the grocery store.
The teens will not bother with cigarettes and skip right to the hard stuff. I used to be a teen, so I know.....ha ha ha
I’m going outside to smoke a nice Greycliff cigar...in your honor.
Cigarettes are now $8+ per pack here in New Yorkistan.
I NEVER buy them here.
There are ways to circumvent these thieves.
But I never do it personally.
Honest, Governor Patterson, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Mr. Tedisco/Murphy whoever the hell wins.
Honest.
I smoked pot years before I started smoking cigarettes.
I’m all smiles that if not today, eventually, you’ll $0.40 pay more for that cigar. Bummer dude.
And of course less kids will take the habit up.
Somehow I don't think you've thought this through.
DU Chick - your at the wrong site. I know its hard for you but please try to get it right, your trying to go here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5371142
Later
If children smoked it would help pay for their own health care.
I gather the concept of personal responsibility is lost on you.
I have four grandkids and none of them smoke. Four kids and only one one smokes. My hubby and I both smoked for years. Hubby died in 2006, not caused by smoking.
I still smoke and so healthy at 79 the Dr.s hate me. You need a attitude adjustment and stop blaming smokers for addicting young people.
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