Jump to full article: Augusta (GA) Chronicle, 2008-07-05
Author: Brandon Larrabee* Morris News Service
Intro: Mr. DeLoach is moving toward peanuts and other crops -- a trend the former president of the Tobacco Growers Association of Georgia said is prevalent.
"That, here again, is more due to economics than it is smoking bans or prices or whatever," Mr. DeLoach said.
Georgia farmers' move away from tobacco has little to do with the 3-year-old law prohibiting smoking in public places, say experts and cigarette opponents.
The lack of collateral damage is all the more reason to wage war against smoking, supporters of tougher measures argue.
The state's spending on programs aimed at stopping smoking is a sliver of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, even as 10,000 Georgians die from smoking every year and the state spends an estimated $1.8 billion annually on tobacco-related health-care costs.
It has been three years since anti-smoking groups celebrated their landmark victory: Gov. Sonny Perdue's reluctant signing of a measure banning indoor smoking in most public places except bars and restaurants that don't serve minors and small businesses with fewer than 10 employees. . . .
That's happening, Mr. DeLoach said, but not because of changes in the law. Rather, it's because energy and fertilizer prices are beginning to make tobacco less profitable when compared to food products, whose value is soaring.
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