Up in Smoke

When Congress ended the 70-year-old tobacco price controls program, it was a “prime example of the ultimate triumph of economic forces over political control,” wrote JLF adjunct scholar Mike Walden. The NC State economics professor explained that as the federal government reduced production of U.S.-grown tobacco, the growers saw the bleak future offered by sticking with the support program. “Experts think the tobacco buyout may cut the number of tobacco farmers in North Carolina by 75 percent,” he wrote. “Ironically, however, because the remaining tobacco farms will be larger and more efficient, the amount of tobacco grown in North Carolina may actually increase and cigarette prices may fall.” Walden’s piece ran in The Carolinian, Monroe’s Enquirer-Journal, the Courier-Times of Roxboro, and the Littleton Observer.