I don’t think tobacco growing is regulated much. My grandmother lived in the Southern Indian/Northern Kentucky area and many people we knew had a small patch for personal use. I also did a search, out of curiosity, and there seem to be several sites that sell tobacco seeds, etc.
Permits or bonds are required for the following activities:
Any person who manufactures cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, snuff, pipe tobacco, and roll-your-own tobacco except for that person’s own consumption or use.
From a report I heard on NPR I think the issue of regulation of tobacco as a drug is that FDA would have to ban it outright by definition. There is no known theraputic use and it cannot be be classified as “safe and effective.”
Padeye is pretty much on target. The tobacco companies are playing a game of chicken with this one. According to the tobacco industry’s brief, if the FDA could regulate tobacco products as a drug, cigarettes would have to be banned due to the agency’s “failure to find that tobacco products are effective and safe for any intended use.” In reality, a ban would never take effect. It’s politically unpopular, and it would take a big bite out of tax revenues legislators need for their pet projects. Cigarette taxes are crack for politicians.
It’s a long way to heaven, but only three short steps to hell.
Why should they make something that keeps the population growth down illegal?
And it is such a pleasant way to die too.
I believe if people could feel how much it hurts holding your own parent or loved one in your arms as they die, or how hard it is to comfort them as they hallucinate from the lack of oxygen to their systems when the lung cancer finally takes over that there would be no need to have legal input. As long as people feel it will never happen to them (my mother’s own words), they will continue to smoke.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss you Mom. I wish you had lived long enough to see my talent as an artist.
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
In reality, a ban would never take effect. It’s politically unpopular, and it would take a big bite out of tax revenues legislators need for their pet projects. Cigarette taxes are crack for politicians.
We’d also have one more drug to on which to throw away perfectly good police resources in our futile efforts to eradicate it.