Jump to full article: Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times, 2009-06-28
Author: Watson Sims
Intro: Thousands of years after its discovery, the obituary of tobacco is being is being prepared in the country of its birth. Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, a law under which tobacco will be treated as a drug rather than an agricultural product.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in America, Indians smoked a sacred substance they called tabaco to celebrate the coming of peace. Now, this same substance is blamed annually for 400,000 American deaths and $100 billion in health care costs.
This is fateful news for North Carolina, which is by far the greatest U.S. producer of tobacco. It is also a poignant personal matter, for in my own life tobacco played the roles of savior and sustainer before turning into destroyer. . . .
we were desperately poor. Then my father switched to tobacco. . . .
How will North Carolinians replace the more than half-billion dollars that came from growing tobacco? I see no magic cure such as replacing one crop with another. And how will history judge America for subsidizing tobacco at home while demanding that other countries stop producing opium and marijuana that may be less harmful?
The questions are blowing in the wind, but only time can bring the answers.
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