Making A Point by Growing Tobacco

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter 04/12/2011

Frustrated about having to dig deeper into their pockets for cigarette money, some US smokers have started to plant tobacco in their backyards, according to a story by Stacey Federoff for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Jim Weinberg, owner of Organica Seed in Massachusetts, who sells packets of about 60 tobacco seeds for $12.50 to home gardeners across the country, said that tobacco seed sales had doubled last year to 5,000. While the process was labor-intensive, a person could grow about 20 plants and make enough cigarettes to smoke more than one pack per day for a year, he said. Don Carey of Peninsula, Ohio, who planted his first tobacco crop after the 2009 federal tax increases, growing 7,000 plants on about an acre of ground, said he had saved thousands of dollars on cigarettes. But Robert Gehrmann, of Crafton, had a different tale to tell. While he initially wanted to save money on cigarettes, he found the process too time-intensive. "I've tried to dry it," he said. "I tried to put it in a pipe, and it wouldn't even burn." Now, as the Pennsylvania representative for the Citizens Freedom Alliance and Smokers Club International, a smokers rights group, he said he continues growing tobacco as a conversation piece and a symbolic gesture of defiance against the amount of tax responsibility placed on smokers. "This is about freedom; it's not about much else," he said. Enditem