Tobacco's Last Breath Good News

Source from:  By JOHN MINER, SUN MEDIA Thu, March 27, 2008  03/28/2008

The demise of Ontario tobacco farming will be good news because it eliminates a shield used by cigarette manufacturers to stall government action, anti-tobacco activists say. Every time the industry was threatened they trotted out tobacco farmers to fight back, Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, said yesterday during a presentation to The London Free Press editorial board. "It would be, 'Look at the devastation that will happen in Tillsonburg and Delhi.' Tobacco farmers were used for years as pawns," he said. Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst and lawyer for the Canadian Cancer Society, said Ontario farmers weren't competitive compared to farmers in developing countries because of higher labour costs and the cold Canadian climate. If it hadn't been for the cigarette manufacturers propping up Ontario farmers by buying tobacco at above world prices, the industry would have disappeared long ago, Cunningham said. Once the most valuable cash crop grown in Ontario by 3,700 farmers, the tobacco farming sector has shrunk to only 350 growers. Last year there were only 32 million pounds grown, down from 155 million pounds 10 years ago. "When the manufacturers realized these guys were no longer a value to them as a political pawn, they abandoned them, they cut them loose," Mahood said. In their ongoing fight against tobacco, the Canadian Cancer Society and Non-Smokers' Rights Association are calling for governments to take action against cigarette smuggling, which is pumping lower priced product onto the market. Cunningham said smuggling has increased over the past year, with most of the illegal cigarettes coming from illegal operations on the American side of Akwesasne. Other sources are Six Nations near Brantford, Kahnawake near Montreal and Tyendinaga near Belleville, he said. The Canadian government should push the U.S. to secure the border area and stop the illegal flow, Cunningham said. "If the reverse was happening, the Americans would insist," Cunningham said. Enditem