[Chief Smoker]

I've gotta give Audrey Silk at NY Clash some kudos for standing up for smokers in such a public way. Not only growing her own tobacco, but doing it in NYC!

The cigarettes Audrey Silk used to smoke — Parliament Lights — are made at a factory in Richmond, Va. The cigarettes she smokes these days are made and grown in Brooklyn, at her house.

Ms. Silk’s backyard is home to raspberry and rose bushes, geraniums, impatiens and 100 tobacco plants in gardening buckets near her wooden deck. Inside her house, around the corner from Flatbush Avenue, in Marine Park, she has to be careful stepping into her basement — one wrong move could ruin her cigarettes. Dozens of tobacco leaves hang there, drying on wires she has strung across the room, where they turn a crisp light brown as they age above a stack of her old Springsteen records.

GREAT Quote: “We fear that the antismokers are so hysterical that if they start finding that people are doing this, they would craft a law to make it illegal,” Ms. Silk said. “I’m waiting for the black helicopters to start flying over my yard.”

You can read the full NY Times article here

[smokybear]

AND, Audrey makes a great point about cigarette taxes and how they are used when she says that the powers that be are using taxes to coerce behavior, and that is not the intended purpose of a taxation system....well said Audrey! And on top of it all, she's a former police officer! Take that! A job that would definitely drive one to smoke....