INVESTING IN TOBACCO JUST BEING 'AMERICAN'

MISSOURI - Dr. Baltazara Lotuaco, a gynecologist in Kansas City, Mo., says
owning tobacco property is just another part of being American.

The Filipino Immigrant bought a farm about eight years ago as an
investment. It came with 6,400 pounds of tobacco quota.

"But owning a tobacco farm is nothing to do with smoking," she says. "They
can always stop smoking."

Lotuaco says tobacco is like most things: Excess is bad.

"It's like peanuts can be carcinogenic," she says. "And if you have a
peanut farm, you're promoting cancer. It's possible."

Lotuaco says it is unfair to target tobacco when so many other things cause
health problems.

"The air we breathe is bad, all this pollution in the air. The carbon from
the gasoline is carcinogenic. Why do we use cars? Why don't we use a horse
and buggy?"

Dr. Hugh Cripps, a family practitioner in Smithville, Tenn., has been
buying land as an investment for years. Along the way, he's acquired about
9,000 pounds of tobacco quota.

"In our little old county here," he says, "just about every farm has
tobacco on it." Cripps says he's lucky to clear a nickel to 15 cents a
pound each year for his leaf. "I would sell my allotment right now, all of
it, to somebody else," he says. "But the farmers don't do that. They rent
it year by year."

He used to actively grow his tobacco but quit, he says, because of "some
personal pains of conscience." He could have gone a step further and sold
off his tobacco altogether, but wondered what would that have accomplished,
other than to devalue his land?

"At some point It becomes sort of ridiculous to chastise yourself for
what's going on in the world," he says.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)