CARROLLTON, Ky. -- With uncertainty surrounding a federal tobacco settlement, President Clinton came to this skeptical burley belt town Thursday to reassure the community that its livelihood won't be snuffed out.
"Tobacco farmers deserve protection and they will not be singled out," Mr. Clinton said in a chilly tobacco warehouse during an hourlong roundtable discussion with tobacco farmers, health advocates and residents.
One day after the nation's largest tobacco companies backed away from a multibillion-dollar legal settlement pending in Congress, the president said he was not trying to destroy the industry.
"We have no interest whatever in putting the tobacco companies out of business. I just want to get them out of the business of selling tobacco to children."
This town of just under 4,000 people, along the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Louisville, welcomed the president. But growers, business owners and people who depend on tobacco for their living are clearly apprehensive about putting their fate in Washington's hands.
"The biggest thing our farmers are concerned about is the uncertainty of the whole tobacco issue," Bill Sprague, a tobacco farmer and president of the Kentucky Farm Bureau, told Mr. Clinton. The crop represents an estimated $1 billion a year in Kentucky.
"It's very difficult for a farmer to make a long-term plan on his farm not knowing next year what will happen to our tobacco program," Mr. Sprague said.
There has been concern in tobacco states that Congress may eliminate the program in which the government sets prices and guarantees the purchase of tobacco not bought by tobacco companies.
"Mr. President, what we need is your leadership," Mr. Sprague said. "We need somebody of your stature that can take this thing by the throat and can push it through. We desperately need some kind of direction from the White House."
Mr. Clinton said he thinks a tobacco settlement can be reached this year, even though the tobacco companies have balked and congressional leaders like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., have said that achieving a settlement this year will be difficult.
"What we need is to get this thing done in Congress this year," Mr. Clinton said, "and do it in a way that achieves our goal of driving down teen smoking as much as we can as fast as we can . . . and still protect the farmer."
During the roundtable, and later in a speech at Carroll County High School, Mr. Clinton said any tobacco settlement should include provisions of legislation filed by U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford and Rep. Scotty Baesler, both Kentucky Democrats.
The bill calls for at least $28.5 billion to be spent on:
- Buying out farmers who cease growing tobacco.
- Attracting business and industry to towns like Carrollton that are economically dependent on tobacco.
- Grants and loans for farmers and their families to pay for higher education.
- Providing assistance to workers involved in the manufacture, processing or warehousing of tobacco.
Mr. Ford said the bill would provide $18 million to Carrollton for economic development.
"If we do something in Washington to reduce what tobacco means to these small towns, we need to do something to compensate for that," he said.
"We really have to have a way to get economic development into these communities," said Rob Kuegel, president of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative.
"Wendell Ford's bill basically gives the family farm a chance to survive," Mr. Clinton said.
Mattie Mack, right, spoke with President Clinton during a roundtable discussion.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
| ZOOM |
|
Carrollton is the county seat of Carroll County, where farmers grew nearly 4 million pounds of tobacco last year. In the county's seven tobacco warehouses -- including the Kentuckiana Tobacco Warehouse, where the roundtable was held -- more than 30 million pounds of tobacco grown in Kentucky and southern Indiana will be sold this year.
Though he was greeted numerous times with thunderous applause during his speech at the high school, not everybody in tobacco country was happy to see Mr. Clinton.
Standing along the route of Mr. Clinton's motorcade just outside Carrollton were about 400 workers who had been given the day off from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. factory in Louisville. Brandishing signs that read, "Tobacco pays my bills" and "It's my job," they protested loudly in a cold, windy drizzle as traffic drove by.
During the roundtable, Mattie Mack of Brandenburg, Ky., a member of the Kentucky Minority Farmers, gave Mr. Clinton an animated, sermon-like lecture that the president listened to intently, his hand on his chin, his eyes fixed on Mrs. Mack.
"I own a 100-acre farm and I've been married 40 years, and I have four children that I educated, three at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, on tobacco," she said.
"And I've raised 38 foster children on this 100-acre farm in the period of '64 to '92. None of those children smoked. My four children did not smoke. I don't smoke; my husband don't smoke. And we are against children smoking, Mr. President, but we shouldn't be penalized on account of children smoking.
"The parents are going to have to teach the children the right way about this tobacco. I look at tobacco as being good to us," she said.
"Tobacco farmers have not done anything wrong," the president responded. "You're growing a legal crop, you're not doing the marketing of the tobacco to children."
Mr. Clinton sought advice from 17-year-old Marissa Vaught, a Carroll County High School junior chosen by school officials to participate.
"What is the most effective thing we can do to discourage your peers from not smoking?" the president asked.
"You might consider giving college scholarship money to (high school) students who are non-smokers," she said.
"We'll have to look into that," Mr. Clinton said.
