David Funderburk: “recently a politician in North Carolina asked if I could describe a tobacco sucker. The answer is a tobacco sucker is…”

“recently a politician in North Carolina asked if I could describe a tobacco sucker. The answer is a tobacco sucker is one who believes that David Kessler of the FDA, the gentleman from California, Henry Waxman, and Bill Clinton are friends of tobacco. That is a tobacco sucker. Madam Speaker, caught in the middle of the assault on tobacco by the Clinton administration are thousands of small hardworking tobacco farmers in the Second District of North Carolina. These farmers are not the giant tobacco corporations the Clinton administration, the FDA, and some in Congress attack regularly. These are small farmers who struggle from year to year just to make ends meet. These are the people who provide the jobs and pay the taxes. The end result of the Clinton crusaders will be to make tobacco products illegal. The White House talks about American jobs, but it will stop at nothing to wipe out a proud and legal American industry and watch its profits head offshore. The tobacco farmers in my district generate over $43,000 in taxes for each acre of tobacco, and tobacco products, provide the Treasury over $11.5 billion annually.”