I wonder If me being a self proclaimed tobacco farmer villifies me. Most people have a negative association with tobacco, and they reasons are rightly justified. From my end, I am growing a legal crop that people can choose to use or not. Tobacco by itself does not make me a "cancer merchant." I sell my product to companies who make the more widely used and heavily taxed cancer causing products. If tobacco became unpopular, the market that I make my money off of would not sustain the necessary level for farmers to be profitable. Currently the average price per pound is about $1.80, which is about where it needs to be. A good year gets about 2,000 pounds per acre of tobacco to sell.
In college I believe I annoyed most of the CFAES people I knew by talking about tobacco. It was something I knew, so I talked about it. I didn't have much else to say most of the time so that's all they usually got out of me. Most of the other ag educators were pretty far away from actual agriculture anyways, so I see why they would be annoyed. My other group of friends were very interested about farming because most of them were city folk.
I never smoked or used any tobacco products until after I turned 22. I smoked my first cigarette at the urging of my cousin at a party, and it wasn't that bad. I would occasionally smoke one or two a night if I was doing enough heavy drinking. I hardly drink anymore now so smoking is non existent to what I do. Back then it was a way to drink a little less, a cigarette would sober me up and give me something to do that slowed down my drinking.
To that end, I have also never smoked weed. I could have if I decided to, but the appeal was not there for me. I was doing just fine drinking all I wanted. I did on one occasion smoke that salvia divinorum stuff, but it did nothing for me and I had no reason to return to it.
Times typed "oftern" -0
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