Duncan Faircloth: “if this were it, the bill would include favors for a variety of special interests. The liquor tax would get special…”

“if this were it, the bill would include favors for a variety of special interests. The liquor tax would get special breaks, even skydiving would get a special break. No, no one ever caused an accident on the road after a night of smoking, and I never heard anyone being attacked after a cigarette binge. My point is, this bill isn't about public health, it is about the easy politics of attacking tobacco. The politics may be easy for Senators outside the Southeast, and particularly North Carolina, but this point reaches beyond politics. It reaches to the men and women in North Carolina and throughout the Southeast, hard-working people wondering why the U.S. Congress and their elected representatives are determined to throw them out of business and out of a job. Everyone in Washington talks about the small farmer. We hear it daily. North Carolina is made up of small farms. The size of an average U.S. farm is over 450 acres, and in North Carolina, it is around 150 acres. We are small farms. Tobacco pays the bills. An acre of tobacco will yield roughly $1,200 a year in net profit. Nothing else compares, and there really isn't anything else they can grow that begins to fit into the pattern and growth and lifestyle of the area. Tobacco keeps eastern North Carolina and Southeastern United States farmers on the land, and that is the simple bottom truth line. Tobacco keeps the family on the family farm.”