Re: Organic tobacco

Sal Schettino (sals@rain.org)
Thu, 12 Oct 1995 09:10:44 -0700

Not every one hold the same beliefs as you. Some people feel that tabacco
is not harmful and in fact is good. Most all feel that the 600 or so
chemicals use to make smoking products and the chemicals they use to grow it
make it harmful. Some people are so righteous and know everything and want
to make other people follow their know it all ideas but they are not always
right. Some groups use tobacco in religious ceremonies and don't want
chemicals in their tobacco. If you don't want organic tobacco don't buy any.
If your are worried about the air you have to breath you have a lot of
cleaning up to do. In LA you can see it. Just as You think tobacco is not
healthily ,others feel just a strongly that the chemicals in tobacco is what
make it unhealthy and tobacco may even be good for you. Who to say. It was
listed in the pharmacopeia at one time as a cure for diseases. You have a
right to your beliefs and they have a right to theirs. Organic tobacco has
to be more healthy than non organic. I feel that mankind has once again
taken something good and to make money have turned it into something really
really bad. I don't feel its the plant I feel its what man in his greed for
moneys had done to it. In the 1 st. chapter of the Bible it says God gave
man all green seed baring herbs for healing. Why would anyone want to take
that away from mankind. Tobacco is green and bares seed after it own kind
and I'm sure it has uses.

At 08:02 PM 10/11/95 EDT, WLockeretz@infonet.tufts.edu wrote:
>
>In response to my question about why an organic producer would produce
>tobacco, several people have said that it is an environmentally preferable
>way of producing tobacco, and that some producers feel that it was not up to
>them to dictate what consumers should or should not be consuming.
>
>This argument leaves out one important point: the health damage that the
>tobacco consumer imposes on other people through secondhand smoke. I venture
>that tobacco consumption is a far greater environmental health problem than
>all the environmental effects of tobacco production -- even conventional
>tobacco production -- put together.
>
>Assuming the organic producer is a environmentally responsible, can one
>justify growing a product as environmentally damaging as tobacco on the
>grounds that you are growing it in an environmentally preferable way?
>
>Moreover, the organic literature is filled with discussions of the need to
>"internalize" costs of production, that is, to make the producer pay for
>"external" costs such as pollution. But the external costs of tobacco
>consumption are far greater than those associated with pesticide use on
>tobacco, say: not just the health problems suffered by unwilling inhalers of
>second hand smoke, but the monetary costs of the smoker's own health problems
>-- only some of which are borne by the smoker, the rest by Medicare, other
>people in the smoker's health insurance pool, etc. The taxes collected on
>tobacco don't come close to covering these, making it a classic example of an
>"externality" that the rest of us pay for. In short, just the kind of thing
>the organic farming literature says we should try to eliminate. Or is that
>only when someone else is creating the externality?
>
>Finally, some people justified organic tobacco production on the grounds that
>tobacco is an important cash crop for small farmers, and that if there is a
>lucrative market out there, why shouldn't they go for it? (Similar to the
>argument on behalf of Columbian coca producers.)
>
>Still seeking a justification for organic tobacco production, I remain,
>
>William Lockeretz
>Tufts University
>
>