RICHMOND, Va. — Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars’ vegetable garden — the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.
Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he’s among a growing number of smokers who have turned to their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew. Byars normally pays $5 for a five-pack of cigars and $3 for a tin of snuff; the seed cost him $9.
“I want to get to where I don’t have to go to the store and buy tobacco but I’ll just be able to supply my own from one year to the next,” Byars said.
In urban lots and on rural acres, smokers and smokeless-tobacco users are planting Virginia Gold, Goose Creek Red, Yellow Twist Bud and dozens of other tobacco varieties.
Although most people still buy from Big Tobacco, the movement took off in April when the tax on cigarettes went up 62 cents a pack, to $1.01. Large tax increases were also imposed on other tobacco products. Tobacco companies increased prices even more to compensate for lost sales.
Some seed suppliers have reported a tenfold increase in sales as some of the country’s 43.3 million smokers look for a cheaper way to get their nicotine fix in a down economy.
