So many ironies reside in this legal action against R. J. Reynolds. How seldom does anyone recall that the English colonies in North America never would have survived but for the colonists’ cultivation and export of tobacco. Even the New England and Middle colonies needed this commerce, and they gained handsomely by supplying shipping, insurance, and financial services, among other things, to the planters of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. In short, tobacco made this country. From the 1650s onward, the British Navigation Acts made tobacco a so-called enumerated commodity, which meant that any tobacco exported from North America had … Continue reading Smoke for Freedom