Political Quotes

“first of all I am proud to say I have never taken a dime from the tobacco companies and do not intend to now. I refuse all of their PAC checks. I have also been the proud sponsor of a lot of tough youth access legislation and hope to have that opportunity again. But this will hurt exactly the wrong people. There are some people that love this legislation. They are the farmers from Malawi and Brazil and Argentina that can grow cheap tobacco and replace our tobacco grown in this country. What does that do? That ruins small poor communities all across Kentucky. They are the communities with the highest unemployment rate. They are the communities with the fewest resources. This is the crop that enables them to pay their taxes so that they can support our schools, our small communities, and help capitalize the changes they are trying to make in agriculture so that they can convert to other crops. They understand how threatened they are. They understand the cheap tobacco that is flooding the world market. They understand how short a lifeline they are on. They are trying to capitalize the changes to get into other crops. Please, do not ruin our smallest, poorest communities.”