How being raised on a tocacco farm changed my beliefs

Change of my beliefs on tobacco:

As a child growing up on a tobacco farm I can remember having to do a lot of hard work. I

lived on a family farm so I was raised not only by my parents, but also by my grandparent, Aunts and Uncles.

I thought that tobacco was great after all it was how my family earned money

.

As I grew older my grandmother would always tell me how bad smoking is for people and for me to never "take up"

smoking. Hearing this always confused me because we raised tobacco and sold it to warehouses that would then sell it

to others who, in the end, would produce cigarettes. I thought we must be bad people if we are growing and selling this

stuff that is so harmful to people.

After giving this some thought and getting up the courage, I told my grandparents that I would no longer help with the

Matti

Dunhill Early Morning Pipe Tobacco, 1990's Murray

U.S. Tobacco Co.

tobacco. I told my grandparents, I felt like by growing tobacco we were helping people harm themselves, we were just

as bad as the cigarette companies. I felt that we were just the bottom of the totem pole so to speak.

My grandparents and I talked about this for a while. And in the end they agreed with me on a lot of the issues that I had

about tobacco. My grandparents told me that they could not make me be apart of something that I felt so strongly

against. My grandmother even told me she was proud of me for standing up for what's right.

Years later my family stopped raising tobacco, I never asked the reasons why, it could have been that they could no

longer get a fare...