• Replace inflammatory rhetoric, stereotyping, and automatic enmity in favor of civil, problem solving dialogue;
• Understand each others' needs, values and concerns;
• Identify areas of common ground and even interdependence, while acknowledging areas of difference; and, finally,
• Work together to create realistic, sensible and sustainable options for communities and families facing pressures associated with transition.

Greetings participants in the Southern Tobacco Communities
Project listserve.

The past 2 weeks have again seen important activity
concerning tobacco and tobacco communities.  Here is a
summary current as of Dec. 20 of some of the key items
based on news reports and personal conversations with
people in tobacco-producing states.  Please feel free to
forward me items of interest.

Regards,

Frank Dukes

REGIONAL AND NATIONAL NEWS

Quota News: 18.5% Cut in flue-cured crop adds up to 46% cut
from 3 years ago -

The flue-cured tobacco basic quota for 2000 was set on Dec.
15 at 543 million pounds.  That is a cut of 18.5 % from the
1999 quota.  The cut could have been even worse had
Stabilization Corporation not sold some 65 million pounds
of stocks at the last minute.  These were sold at a deep
discount from the minimum purchase price paid farmers who
had brought it to market, where it went unsold.  In order
to pay the costs, the no-net-cost assessment risen to 5
cents/lb., with 2.5 cents per pound for the grower and 2.5
cents per pound for the purchaser. That means that
flue-cured farmers will be allowed to bring 543 million
pounds of leaf to market next year on about 260,057 acres.
That's down from this year's 666.2 million pounds on 319,061
acres.
Many regional newspapers covered the story.  The formal
announcement is at:
http://www.fsa.usda.gov/pas/news/releases/1999/december.htm

Report documents tobacco companies' move overseas and
resultant farming decline -

The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society
and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids issued a report on
Dec. 14 accused the tobacco companies of abandoning
American farmers.
According to this report, the percentage of American-grown
tobacco in cigarettes made in the United States has dropped
from 90 percent three decades ago to less than 60 percent.
The growers' share of every dollar Americans spend on
cigarettes has declined from 7 cents to 2 cents while
tobacco firms' proportion has increased from 36 cents to 49
cents since 1990.  The price of cigarettes is nearly three
times higher than it was in 1980 while the price for
American flue-cured tobacco is 19 percent higher.
The shift away from American-grown tobacco has resulted in
the disappearance of
100,000 family-owned tobacco farms in North Carolina and
other leaf-producing
states since 1980.
The report asserts that smoking rates could have declined
by a third and kept farmers producing the same amount of
tobacco as they did 20 years ago if the tobacco
manufacturers used as much American-made tobacco in their
cigarettes as they did then.
  Matt Myers, recently appointed as executive
director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, was quoted
as saying that ''The American tobacco farmer is not the
enemy of the public health community,'' and that he and his
colleagues will be "more successful with public health
concerns if the needs of the family farmer are addressed."
The report suggests several steps for addressing the
economic decline of tobacco producing regions, including
helping growers make the transition to other agricultural
enterprises, funding a buy-out for growers and quota
holders who want to quit tobacco farming; and developing
other uses for tobacco such as bio-engineered medical
products.

Lawsuit still threatened -

Alexander J. Pires Jr continues to state his intent to file
an $18 million class-action lawsuit against the tobacco
companies and attorneys for the states that negotiated
settlements with the industry.  He was quoted as saying
that "Your life is over as a tobacco farmer" at a meeting
in Halifax Virginia held a week ago.

Update on spending on tobacco control -

The national tobacco settlement will put $8.7 billion into
46 state coffers this year and next.  Four other states
settled separately, for an additional $40 billion over 25
years. Here's what states plan to spend on tobacco control:

Alabama: $500,000
Alaska: $1.4 million
Connecticut: $45 million: $5 million in programs, $40
million to set up a trust fund for future spending
Florida: $45 million
Hawaii: 25 percent of $1.2 billion in settlement funds to
be received over 25 years
Louisiana: $4.1 million
Maine: 10 percent of $1.5 billion in settlement funds to be
received over 25 years
Maryland: $21 million
Minnesota: $590 million for a trust fund, with the interest
financing tobacco control
Mississippi: $62 million
Montana: $3.5 million
Nevada: 10 percent of $1.2 billion in settlement funds to
be received over 25 years. In addition, will use 10 percent
for health care, including $2 million to PBS television
stations in return for promise to air antismoking ads
New Hampshire: $3 million
New Jersey: $18.5 million
Rhode Island: $1 million
Texas: $1.3 billion for a trust fund, with the interest to
finance tobacco control
Virginia: 10 percent of $4 billion in settlement funds to
be received over 25 years
Washington: $100 million
Wisconsin: $23.5 million

Source: Health Policy Tracking Service, National Conference
of State Legislatures; Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

Interest in nitrosamine-low tobacco producing continues -

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, R.J. Reynolds
Tobacco Co. announced at a tobacco forum at N.C. State
University that it will recruit flue-cured tobacco growers
to produce leaf with low concentrations of nitrosamines.
Star Scientific Inc. of Petersburg, Va. has approached
growers in Eastern North Carolina offering to provide new
curing barns if the growers will sell half their crop to
Star at a price of $2 a pound. Star is also buying leaf for
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. This may set up a
competition for which method can produce the lowest
nitrosamines while remaining commercially viable.  It also
will bring up a discussion of whether such tobacco is
indeed any safer than conventionally cured tobacco, and who
should make that determination, and whether and how such
tobacco may be marketed.

Billy Carter, a farmer from Moore County who heads the
Tobacco Growers' Association of North Carolina, told the
tobacco forum that the nitrosamine issue could further
propel the industry to direct contracts. Because
low-nitrosamine tobacco can't be distinguished visually,
leaf buyers would have to have total control over their
product, he was quoted as saying.  Carter was further
quoted as follows: ''I perceive this industry from the
growers' standpoint as one that is on the verge of
implosion,'' he said. ''Perhaps the most we as growers
could hope for at this point is that the blast can be
managed just well enough that there will be some
recognizable pieces left for us to reassemble.''

VIRGINIA

- Governor Gilmore proposes to spend the first year's Phase
I funding that is coming to the Tobacco Revitalization
Commission (which is to receive 50% of the overall
settlement money) on direct payments to quota holders and
producers.  But those payments appear to end after the
first year.  He is proposing to spend $69 million over the
next two years as follows:
* Nearly $10 million to establish a new biotechnology
research center and nearly $2 million to begin construction
of a new biomedical sciences building at Virginia Tech;
* More than $14 million to construct a new science building
at Longwood College;
* More than $3 million to create a new college of
information science and technology and more than $2 million
to create a new technology training center at Radford
University;
* $2 and-a-half million to turn an abandoned hospital
facility into classrooms and a technology center at the
University of Virginia's College at Wise;
* More than $600 thousand to construct a learning resources
building at Southwest Virginia Community College;
 * $4 and-a-half million to construct a manufacturing
technology building at Central Virginia Community College;
* Nearly $8 million to update occupational and technical
equipment at several community colleges in Southside.
         The Governor will also recommend the commission
set aside more than $16 million to develop tourism,
including:
* More than $3 million make infrastructure improvements and
construct a lodge at Hemlock Haven Conference Center in
Hungry Mother State Park;
* $13 million to design and build a new facility at the
Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville.
 This proposal is what many farmers and community
advocates have feared - the use of the settlement money to
substitute for projects that are typically supported by
general appropriations.  This plan is likely to meet with
substantial opposition from members of the Commission not
appointed by the Governor.
 
 NORTH CAROLINA

- Board set to handle Phase I money
The foundation that is to receive half of the state's $4.6
billion from the national tobacco settlement has met by
teleconference and elected its chair, William Friday.  The
Golden LEAF Foundation can offer seven types of grants:
education assistance; job training; scientific research;
economic-hardship assistance; public works and industrial
recruitment; health and human services; and community
assistance to economically depressed and deteriorating
tobacco-dependent communities. North Carolina also has a
Rural Prosperity Task Force directed by Erskine Bowles,
former White House chief of staff, that is expected to
impact the Foundation's decisions.
There is some uncertainty about whether this money will
actually be distributed, since the consent decree that gave
the General Assembly until March 15 to approve the plan for
directing half the settlement money to the foundation has
been challenged by Raleigh lawyer Eugene Boyce.

- The North Carolina legislature is currently in special
session to consider ways of providing assistance to
flood-damaged areas of the state.

 - Some Phase II money has been delayed because of
difficulty in proving who the farmers and quota holders
are. Almost $59 million, or 42 percent of the first-year
payment of $140 million, will not be paid out by the end of
the year. Chase Manhattan Bank, the trustee for the Phase
II settlement, should issue checks by Dec. 31 to 51 percent
of the state's tobacco growers and 54 percent of its
allotment holders.  Growers and quota owners will divide
68.5 cents for each pound of tobacco that they lost from
1998 to 1999.  The average check will be $1,387.
Though officials initially estimated that there were
90,000-100,000 allotment holders in the state, over 119,000
have been identified so far. Of the 123,000 completed forms
that were received, almost 15,000 had errors

 KENTUCKY:

- Conference planning continues for Lexington's meeting on
Tuesday, January 18 to bring community-level health and
tobacco leaders together to discuss the tobacco settlement
and other issues of mutual interest.  Over 300   people
have been invited to attend
- Farmer's Pride: The Kentucky Health and Agriculture Forum
just produced their third insert for this publication which
reaches most farmers in the state.  Articles have focused
on:
* The Unified Plan for KY Agriculture which advocates for
settlement money to be used to restructure KY ag. to be
more stable and profitable.
* The problem of youth tobacco use in KY and what can be
done about it.
* The upcoming conference
* Opportunities for health and agriculture communities to
work together in the future
- KENTUCKY ACTION, a statewide coalition of tobacco control
advocates, is spearheading a media and public awareness
event to be held on Valentine's Day which will involve KY
youth traveling to Frankfort to educate their lawmakers
about the tobacco settlement and the need to secure funding
for youth smoking prevention and cessation

SOUTH CAROLINA

- Gov. Jim Hodges is considering putting South Carolina's
$2.2 billion tobacco settlement up for a bond sale so the
state would have immediate access to the full sum. The idea
is that the state would receive a large one-time payment to
fund projects immediately. Attorney General Charlie Condon
is apparently opposing the plan as too risky, since
payments will decline if smoking rates drop.