Blowing Smoke on the Future of Tobacco

I was helping someone out awhile back - doing a little work with them - and as part of the package I was forced to listen to one of those afternoon radio talk programs.

The host of the show had some interesting tape (sound bites, I think they're called) of Vice President Al Gore. The first bite was Gore, with tears in his eyes (or voice, at least), expressing his commitment to protect the children of America from the evils of tobacco.

The second bite dated back to Gore's 1991 campaign for the presidency. The host said the bite was recorded in North Carolina, at a fund raiser for Gore held by tobacco farmers. On the tape, Gore went though every stage of the process of tobacco cultivation and told the potential donors, with pride, that he had tied tobacco bundles, he had planted, he had been involved in every step of the tobacco-growing process...

Now even though he may be my president next month, I'm not a huge fan of Al's. And the radio show's effort to present him to the public with his pants down was entertaining. But the truth is that it's been eight years since the 1991 speech: maybe the man's changed his mind. That would be an unusual sign of intelligence among politicians - at least at the national level. But I'll still grant Al that possibility.

But the program started me thinking about tobacco, and I'm concerned about the future of tobacco. My concern is that it may have a future; I would rather it didn't.

The rest of America doesn't think we grow much tobacco in Appalachia. And when compared to the amount of tobacco that get's grown on flat land, well, I guess we don't. But for our little economies in rural areas of central and southern Appalachia, tobacco is sometimes the only (legal) cash crop.

So the events of the past week have been interesting from a number of viewpoints....

The tobacco growers' trust fund

The country's four biggest cigarette companies agreed this past week to start a $5.15 billion trust fund for tobacco growers. The fund is suppose to help growers deal with the decline of the tobacco market in the face of higher prices and new anti-smoking initiatives.

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