Why is it that tobacco prices are not affected like food crops?

Question

There must be some magical place in the US that tobacco crops are not subject to severe price increases and weather changes, like corn, soy, OIL. Why don't we grow food crops in those areas instead of tobaco?

Answer 1

The reason is primarily because many people are quitting. People are growing other products on land formerly used for tobacco and the government is still subsidizing the product.

Tobacco is still a viable export product. Many countries still aren't concerned with second hand smoke and other PC reasons. The popularity of US cigarettes is still high.

Cigar makers still use the Connecticut shade grown product as a wrapper on many of the highest grade cigars. It's also popular as a pipe tobacco and helps bring currency back into the country. Unfortunately, the politicians and health activists have done a good job of making people feel like criminals when using tobacco, but then rely heavily on the taxes it brings in.

My feeling about the health/tax thing is that if you want to keep people from using it, make it illegal, and then stop taking tax money from it. The whole thing is extremely hypocritical.

Answer 2

I think it's more supply and demand.  When food crops start going up people have less money to spend on tobacco.  So, they have more of a supply (whenver gas and food rise more people tend to quit to save money).  Therefore since there's not as much of a demand they can keep the prices low rather than sit on all of their product.