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News
Release
Congressman Bob Etheridge
North Carolina
March 25, 2003
Contact:
Sara Lang
Phone:
(202) 225-4531
In Letter, Lawmaker Calls on Attorney General to Help Restore Confidence to America’s Tobacco Growers
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington) has written a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft urging him to abandon the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry, saying that the lawsuit will extend the suffering of tobacco farmers and rural communities. This week the Justice Department declared its intentions to seek $289 billion from nine tobacco companies in the federal lawsuit, which was filed in 1999. The case is scheduled to head to federal court next year.“If this lawsuit is allowed to continue, tobacco sharecroppers, not shareholders, will bear the brunt,” Etheridge said. “Tobacco country is already hurting from dramatic quota cuts. Farmers and their families see their way of life slipping away. Just last week, this nation had a stark reminder of the pain and frustration felt in tobacco country, when Dwight Watson took his tractor to Washington. We must act now to save rural America, and the first step is the rejection of this lawsuit.”
Over the past five years, tobacco farmers’ quota has steadily declined, cutting their incomes in half. A 1999 study by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University shoed that farmers bear the burden of the anti-tobacco campaign because they are unable to recoup their losses through price increases, as cigarette manufacturers have done. Another 1990 study by the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center shows that another judgment or settlement against the tobacco industry in the range of only $150 billion would cost the state nearly 13,000 jobs.
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