Tobacco growers getting over $300M to abandon crop

Why are they upset that they can't grow tobacco? They should grow something that helps people, like FOOD.

Tobacco, like any specialized crop, requires unique farming and harvesting equipment and that's a huge investment for the average farmer. Just asking them not to grow a legal product isn't helping them.

Conservatively speaking why should WE be helping THEM? or are you just pulling our legs with your socialist, MR. Goodie Twoshoes,"Just asking them not to grow a legal product isn't helping them." concern.

Did I say that we should be helping them? I simply point out that they are growing a legal product. Governments mess about in the economy at their own risks.

Tobacco farmers should have got JACK SQUAT - I love the ideological nonsense of Conservative government bailouts for market sectors that have played their economic swan song. Let's see them apply this again.

I don't like the idea of paying someone to stop doing something, particularly if they weren't going to do that thing in the first place. It is a waste of good money. If tobacco farming is no longer profitable for them (as the article seems to indicate), what are they doing growing it anyway? And if the government just wants to discourage tobacco farming, well, I don't believe that is really in the purview of the responsibilities of government.

The problem is that the government has taxed their product out of affordibility. How would you feel if your company had an ever increasing burden to pay with no end in sight?

Now if the tobacco industry was subject to the same laws as any other business, then fine, let them go without anything. But they are not because they were used as a tax siphon for years. I don't think it's too much to do by giving back a fraction of the money which was taken through them through taxes.

I would be pretty pissed at the government if I were in the tobacco industry at this point, but that doesn't change my position. Your point that this returns a fraction of the money siphoned off already through taxes is well taken, but, as a conservative, I regard both the original over-taxation and the current attempted pay-off as beyond the purview of government. I am fine with some mild disincentives to discourage what is regarded as "harmful behavior" amongst its citizens, but this is quite beyond that.

I would be pretty pissed at the government if I were in the tobacco industry at this point, but that doesn't change my position. Your point that this returns a fraction of the money siphoned off already through taxes is well taken, but, as a conservative, I regard both the original over-taxation and the current attempted pay-off as beyond the purview of government. I am fine with some mild disincentives to discourage what is regarded as "harmful behavior" amongst its citizens, but this is quite beyond that.

That's fine that you are conservative, as I am. But you don't screw around with these farmers by killing their industry on purpose. The over-taxation has already happened. I am sure you would of agreed that it shouldn't of happen in the first place. Do you think it's fair for farmers who have been doing this for generations to have to abandon their farms without compensation because the government hates smokers?

Perhaps the better solution would be to give enough money to the farmers to buy new equipment to grow new crops. I think that is quite a fair compromise for destroying their livelyhood.

the government only gives a shit because they have to foot the bill for socialized medicine. anti-smoking is just one stop on the long ride of the government telling us whats for our own good.

We both agree that the over-taxation was wrong. However, regardless of past behavior, I do not think that "compensation" is really an adequate justification, even if that were the purpose of the government in doing this. I do not believe it is the responsibility of the government to distribute wealthy "fairly", or even at all. That was one point I was trying to indicate by saying that I was conservative. Furthermore, I would not be adverse to incentives that would encourage other forms of crop production, or enable farmers to make that shift. I would see that more as investing in future production, as opposed to the pay-off that I seem to see in this situation right now.

The problem is that the government has taxed their product out of affordibility. How would you feel if your company had an ever increasing burden to pay with no end in sight?

Now if the tobacco industry was subject to the same laws as any other business, then fine, let them go without anything. But they are not because they were used as a tax siphon for years. I don't think it's too much to do by giving back a fraction of the money which was taken through them through taxes.

Fuck'em for growing poison in the first place. The tobacco fine money should go to treatment for lung cancer, or to clean up the trillion odd cigarette butts in every Tim Hortons parking lot, not bail out the people who are part of the problem.

Just another agricultural subsidy.

I smoke and I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for tobacco growers who have been too stupid or greedy to see the writing on the wall in time to grow something that doesn't kill with various forms of cancer or heart disease.

In March of 2007 there were huge protests by tobacco growers using tractors to block MP's offices. They were told at the time that a 'package' wasn't politically sellable and that they should wait a year.

With the economy turning, especially Ontario's, there's even less money to pay for the package BUT there's an election coming in the fall so it's time for the government to grease the skids as they always do.

It's a pre-election pay-off!