Now This is Country Living: Homegrown Tobacco
The Times profiles one Audrey Silk of Marine Park, a retired cop who grows her own tobacco at home and is “the founder of New York City Clash (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment), a smokers’ rights group.” Although growing your own tobacco for personal consumption is legal, Silk “said that she worried that antismoking advocates…
The Times profiles one Audrey Silk of Marine Park, a retired cop who grows her own tobacco at home and is “the founder of New York City Clash (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment), a smokers’ rights group.” Although growing your own tobacco for personal consumption is legal, Silk “said that she worried that antismoking advocates and the Bloomberg administration, which pushed to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, would make homegrown tobacco their next target. ‘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.'” Meanwhile, the owner of the Mississippi-based company that provides Silk with seeds “was not surprised to learn that the Golden Seal tobacco had done well in the Brooklyn sunshine” because of the plant’s resiliency.
Now in Brooklyn, Homegrown Tobacco: Local, Rebellious and Tax Free [NY Times]
Photo by Mickki.
“being a NYC cop is a hard job. I don’t begrudge them their pensions.”
Bingo. Anyone who has a job description that includes taking a bullet for and from strangers…I’ll never complain about their benefits.
– Give me a break being a cop isnt even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs (fishermen is #1), the whole “danger thing” is a red herring. BTW far more “wall streeters” died (2016) doing there jobs than all the NYC cops who EVER lost there lives in the line of duty (780). Not that is relevant anyway.
Full TAX-FREE income and benefits after 20 years on the job (as opposed to vesting after 20 yrs) is a disgrace and people who defend it prove why public sector unions are getting hammered right now.
Dave, I think those adjustments must and will be made. Even Andrew Cuomo is on the bandwagon but the inequity you describe is at least as much do to with the failure of the private sector to invest in the future and be more competitive with other advanced nations as it is with overly-generous public sector perks. Nothing you describe in the private sector would be any different today if the cops had to retire at seventy or if civil servants were just left with social security to see them through their old age. IN FACT, when the private sector tanks, it is the public sector that keeps the economy afloat with its spending and secure incomes.
I quit smoking 3 years ago, but this is totally awesome. I may try growing some this year. The plants are actually quite beautiful.
One concern: tobacco carries a virus that can kill tomato plants (they’re in the same nightshade family, i think.)
In my years of gardening in NYC, I’ve seen all sort of strange crops. There was a woman at a community garden in Harlem who grew cotton. I’ve even seen a patch of opium poppies!
But back to the real topic here, homegrown tobacco is probably less dangerous than what Phillip Morris will sell you. Unless you are shipping in the chemicals, etc. to shove in your homemade ciggies. And smoker’s rights? Please. I smoke, but I’m not dumb enough or arrogant enough to think I have the “right” to smoke any and everywhere. It’s rude.
I’m okay with police pensions. Cops play a much more vital role in our everyday lives than bankers and hedge fund managers.
“being a NYC cop is a hard job. I don’t begrudge them their pensions.”
Bingo. Anyone who has a job description that includes taking a bullet for and from strangers…I’ll never complain about their benefits.
Minard, I’m not comparing cops to wall streeters, just to your average middle class person who no longer has a pension and pays a hell of a lot more for health insurance and probably hasn’t had a raise in 4 years.
Retirement at 46 is ridiculous. They can be taken off the street and can work elsewhere. The whole system is totally fucked up. thankfully, given what’s happening in WI and IN and elsewhere, it’s startting to move towards normalcy.
Dave, being a NYC cop is a hard job. I don’t begrudge them their pensions. Besides, back when those benefits were negotiated it was assumed that the private sector would continue to prosper exponentially, who would have guessed that Wall Street bankers and their ilk would steal the country blind, ruin our prosperity, and drive the entire private sector to within an inch of the Great Depression? Whose fault is that? the police union? I don’t think so.
Look at her in that photo in the NY Times with her dog on her lap, killing him with second hand smoke.
What an inconsiderate B&^%ch.