Biden administration points finger at Republicans for internet bill hikes
Brian Fung, CNN – April 2, 2024
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Tens of millions of Americans could see skyrocketing internet bills this spring or may be abruptly kicked off their plans — and it will be congressional Republicans who are to blame, the Biden administration said Tuesday.
The accusation reflects a last-ditch pressure campaign to save a federal program that has helped connect more than 23 million US households to the internet, many for the first time. Without it, those households will be forced to pay hundreds of dollars more per year to stay online.
By the end of the month, funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) will run out, jeopardizing the monthly discounts on internet service benefiting an estimated 59 million low-income people, including veterans, students and older Americans.
Many ACP subscribers would be forced to choose between paying for groceries and paying for internet service if the program is shut down, CNN has previously reported.
Although popular with users from across the ideological spectrum, the ACP’s future is in doubt as legislation to extend the program has stalled. Now, as the Federal Communications Commission has begun winding it down, the Biden administration is ramping up pressure on the GOP for standing in the way of a critical lifeline for accessing health care, jobs and education.
“President [Joe] Biden has been calling on Congress to pass legislation that would extend the benefit through 2024. And we know Democratic members and senators have joined him in that effort,” a senior administration official told reporters. “But unfortunately, Republicans in Congress have failed to act.”
Biden has called on Congress to approve $6 billion to continue the ACP. A bill introduced in January by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate would authorize $7 billion. That legislation has 216 co-sponsors in the House, including 21 Republicans, and three in the Senate, including two Republicans.
But policy experts have said it is unlikely Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson will let the bill onto the House floor as GOP leaders have decried government spending, despite the program being used in virtually every congressional district nationwide.
“It is clear the program would be extended if the speaker would allow a vote,” said Blair Levin, an analyst at the market research firm New Street Research. “So far, he has not said anything about it, but it appears he will not allow the House to vote on the legislation. He has not, to my knowledge, said anything substantive about the legislation or the program.”
Levin added that support by Republican Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota also suggest the bill would pass the Senate, making the House “the biggest obstacle.”
Spokespeople for Johnson and for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The result is a stalemate that, if left unresolved, will lead to the collapse of the ACP by early May.
Administration officials declined to say whether Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris have personally discussed the ACP with congressional Republicans. But the officials told reporters there is currently no Plan B if Congress fails to extend the program.
“There are really no good options in a world in which Congress leaves us without any funding,” said another senior administration official. “There are certainly no easy answers for us to move forward if this program ends. So we want to work as hard as possible to make sure we avoid that possibility.”
Some lawmakers had hoped that money for the ACP could have been included in the recent bipartisan spending deal intended to keep the government open, but those hopes were ultimately left unfulfilled.
On Tuesday, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel sent a letter to Congress outlining the impact that the ACP’s disruption would cause.
“The end of the ACP will have broad impact,” Rosenworcel wrote. “But it is worth noting that they will have special impact on certain vulnerable populations, including senior citizens. We know that nearly half of ACP households are led by someone over the age of 50.”
More than 4 million military households are signed up for the ACP, Rosenworcel added, while 3.4 million households within the ACP program reported using school lunch or breakfast programs, indicating that many program subscribers are parents of children whose ability to do homework assignments may be interrupted by the loss of the ACP. To qualify for the ACP, users are required to meet certain income limits or be a participant in one of a number of other federal aid programs, such as the National School Lunch Program.
Rosenworcel called on Sen. Maria Cantwell and the panel she chairs, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, to quickly advance legislation to extend the ACP. But the bill’s future remains foggy.
Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts: Letter from the Editor
Chris Quinn, Editor, Cleveland Plain Dealer – March 30, 2024
Some readers complain that we have different standards involving Donald Trump and Joe Biden. (AP Photo, File)AP
A more-than-occasional arrival in the email these days is a question expressed two ways, one with dripping condescension and the other with courtesy:
Why don’t our opinion platforms treat Donald Trump and other politicians exactly the same way. Some phrase it differently, asking why we demean the former president’s supporters in describing his behavior as monstrous,insurrectionist and authoritarian. I feel for those who write. They believe in Trump and want their local news source to recognize what they see in him.
The angry writers denounce me for ignoring what they call the Biden family crime syndicate and criminality far beyond that of Trump. They quote news sources of no credibility as proof the mainstream media ignores evidence that Biden, not Trump, is the criminal dictator.
The courteous writers don’t go down that road. They politely ask how we can discount the passions and beliefs of the many people who believe in Trump.
This is a tough column to write, because I don’t want to demean or insult those who write me in good faith. I’ve started it a half dozen times since November but turned to other topics each time because this needle hard to thread. No matter how I present it, I’ll offend some thoughtful, decent people.
The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.
This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.
The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.
As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost.
Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it?
The March 25 edition of the New Yorker magazine offers some insight. It includes a detailed review of a new book about Adolf Hitler, focused on the year 1932. It’s called “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” and is by historian Timothy W. Ryback. It explains how German leaders – including some in the media — thought they could use Hitler as a means to get power for themselves and were willing to look past his obvious deficiencies to get where they wanted. In tolerating and using Hitler as a means to an end, they helped create the monstrous dictator responsible for millions of deaths.
How are those German leaders different from people in Congress saying the election was stolen or that Jan. 6 was not an insurrection aimed at destroying our government? They know the truth, but they deny it. They see Trump as a means to an end – power for themselves and their “team” – even if it means repeatedly telling lies.
Sadly, many believe the lies. They trust people in authority, without questioning the obvious discrepancies or relying on their own eyes. These are the people who take offense to the truths we tell about Trump. No one in our newsroom gets up in the morning wanting to make a segment of readers feel bad. No one seeks to demean anyone. We understand what a privilege it is to be welcomed into the lives of the millions of people who visit our platforms each month for news, sports and entertainment. But our duty is to the truth.
Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.
I hope not.
In our newsroom, we’ll do our part. Much as it offends some who read us, we will continue to tell the truth about Trump.
Extremist ex-adviser drives ‘anti-white racism’ plan for Trump win – report
Martin Pengelly in Washington – April 1, 2024
Stephen Miller at the White House, in Washington DC on 15 July 2020.Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The anti-immigration extremist, white nationalist and former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller is helping drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Donald Trump returns to power next year, Axios reported.
“Longtime aides and allies … have been laying legal groundwork with a flurry of lawsuits and legal complaints – some of which have been successful,” Axios said on Monday.
Should Trump return to power, Axios said, Miller and other aides plan to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.
Such an effort would involve “eliminating or upending” programmes meant to counter racism against non-white groups.
The US supreme court, dominated 6-3 by rightwing justices after Trump installed three, recently boosted such efforts by ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
America First Legal, a group founded by Miller and described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union, is helping drive plans for a second Trump term, Axios said.
In 2021, an AFL suit blocked implementation of a $29bn Covid-era Small Business Administration programme that prioritised helping restaurants owned by women, veterans and people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups.
Miller called that ruling “the first, but crucial, step towards ending government-sponsored racial discrimination”.
Recent AFL lawsuits include one against CBS and Paramount alleging discrimination against a white, straight man who wrote for the show Seal Team, and a civil rights complaint against the NFL over the “Rooney Rule”, which says at least two minority candidates must be interviewed for vacant top positions.
Reports of extremist groups planning for a second Trump presidency are common, not least around Project 2025, a blueprint for transition and legislative priorities prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right Washington thinktank.
Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to [Joe] Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”
Throughout Trump’s term in office, Miller was a close adviser and speechwriter – though one of the 45th president’s less successful TV surrogates, ridiculed for using “spray-on hair”.
Controversies were numerous. Among them were reported advocacy for blowing up migrants with drones (which Miller denied); for sending 250,000 US troops to the southern border; and for beheading an Isis leader, dipping the head in pig’s blood and “parad[ing] it around to warn other terrorists” (Miller denied it and called the source of the story, the former defense secretary Mark Esper, a “moron”).
In 2019, after Miller was discovered to have touted white nationalist articles and books, 55 civil rights groups wrote to Trump, protesting: “Stephen Miller has stoked bigotry, hate and division with his extreme political rhetoric and policies throughout his career. The recent exposure of his deep-seated racism provides further proof that he is unfit to serve and should immediately leave his post.”
On Monday, Cedric Richmond, co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, said: “It’s not like Donald Trump has been hiding his racism … [but] he’s making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy … It’s up to us to stop him.”
Despite his legal advocacy in the cause of eradicating “anti-white racism”, Miller is not himself a lawyer.
Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, recently told the Guardian those close to the former president were now “looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding. Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.”
Trump Allies Plan to Reinterpret Civil Rights Laws to Protect White People: Report
Nikki McCann Ramirez – April 1, 2024
Allies of Donald Trump and powerful conservative organizations are preparing to launch an offensive against “anti-white racism” should the former president retake the White House in November. According to a report from Axios, those in Trump’s orbit are gearing up for a widespread re-interpretation of civil rights laws to combat what they perceive as reverse racism against white Americans.
According to the report, this would include a mass gutting of government programs and diversity initiatives. “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told Axios.
The initiative is already being spearheaded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who founded the right-wing judicial activist outfit America First Legal after leaving the White House. Miller has leveraged Civil Rights-era laws intended to protect minorities from discrimination to challenge “woke” corporate policies of inclusion. America First Legal has sued Nike, Disney, United Airlines, the National Football League, and CBS Entertainment — among others— for allegedly discriminating against white men. Several of the lawsuits cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Miller and his organization are not acting alone. America First Legal was consulted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in the drafting of its “Project 2025” policy handbook. The handbook contains language calling for an end to “affirmative discrimination,” and calls for an incoming conservative administration to “reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness.”
Trump himself has repeatedly claimed to be the target of anti-white discrimination. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the former president has directed his advisers to look into ways he might compel the Justice Department to investigate New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the former president for fraud last year. Trump regularly refers to James as “racist” in his social media posts and public statements.
Last week, National Review contributing editor Deroy Murdock suggested on Fox Business that Trump has grounds to sue James on the basis of discrimination.
“I think what President Trump should do is sue her on the basis of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Murdock said. When asked if he had suggested this directly to the former president, Murdock responded that he “will,” and that the message will get to Trump “sooner or later.”
Feds Want to Seize This $7 Million Condo in a Luxe Trump Building
Justin Rohrlich – April 1, 2024
UCG
U.S. authorities have targeted an apartment in a Donald Trump-branded luxury Manhattan tower, where they are looking to seize a $7 million unit prosecutors say was illicitly obtained by one of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s children.
A forfeiture complaint filed Friday in Manhattan federal court and obtained by The Daily Beast says the action “concerns the misappropriation, theft, or embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Congolese treasury, some of which was used for the purchase of a luxury apartment in the Southern District of New York for the use of President Nguesso’s daughter.”
“That property is Unit 32G in the Trump International Hotel & Tower at 1 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023,” the complaint states.
The United States is seeking to repossess the property “because the funds used to acquire it are traceable to violations of specified unlawful activities and U.S. law,” according to the complaint.
Sassou-Nguesso, who has been described as a breathtakingly corrupt kleptocrat, has held power in Congo, almost uninterrupted, since 1979.
Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2023 Navy Day parade in Saint Petersburg, Russia.Sputnik/Alexander Kazakov/Kremlin via Reuters
A past listing for the apartment says it is a corner space “overlooking Central Park and the Hudson River [and] captures the essence of the most sought after Columbus Circle neighborhood. Special features include: floor to-ceiling windows, 10′ ceilings, a gracious entrance gallery, living/dining room, a windowed eat-in-kitchen with washer/dryer, two bedrooms with spectacular views and luxurious baths ensuite, plus a powder room, capacious closets and a separate bar, ideal for entertaining. Sorry no pets allowed.”
Ownership of the Trump International Hotel & Tower is complicated, with the Trump Organization managing the building and owning some units and hundreds of individual owners holding the rest. On Monday, a Trump Org spokeswoman, Kimberly Benza, told The Daily Beast, “If this sale did occur, it would be by a 3rd party unit owner unrelated to our Organization.”
The apartment was procured via a byzantine array of shell companies and intermediaries who routed funds stolen from Congo’s public coffers through entities in Portugal, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Brazil, the forfeiture complaint states. The money finally ended up in the U.S., where Sassou-Nguesso and her enablers hired law firm K&L Gates to purchase apartment 32G “for the benefit of Sassou-Nguesso, using a portion of the laundered funds and embezzlement proceeds,” according to the complaint.
Claudia Sassou-Nguesso, daughter of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, during a national assembly meeting in 2012.Guy Gervais/KITINA/AFP via Getty Images
The complaint says Sassou-Nguesso was aware she could be rejected by Trump International as “a politically-exposed person,” and considered listing her cousin as the unit’s beneficial owner to avoid trouble. However, Trump International officials told Sassou-Nguesso’s team that “it was ‘not a problem’ and that the information was ‘only for the condominium building,’” the complaint goes on. On June 24, 2014, a Portuguese businessman representing Sassou-Nguesso in the deal wired a $710,000 deposit to the condo’s seller, sending the $6,525,000 balance a month later, according to the complaint.
“In sum, the money used to purchase the Defendant Asset was a portion of the approximately USD 19.5 million of Congolese state funds embezzled through… sham contracts… and these embezzled funds were used to purchase the Defendant Asset for Sassou Nguesso’s apparent personal enrichment,” the complaint states.
After the Global Witness report was released in 2019, the Trump Organization said that monthly common charges paid by condo owners did not go directly to Trump himself “for profit.”
According to the forfeiture complaint, Sassou-Nguesso paid some $250,000 in common charges between 2018 and 2022. It says they were paid “out of bank accounts in Luxembourg, Portugal, and the United Arab Emirates” in the name of another Portuguese national fronting for Sassou-Nguesso.
Although the apartment has apparently remained unoccupied since it was purchased, prosecutors say they have reviewed emails from Sassou-Nguesso about interior design work to be conducted at the property, transferring, via her worldwide network, more than $400,000 to a Portuguese firm to carry out the job.
The apartment, according to the forfeiture complaint, “is traceable to… a conspiracy to launder the proceeds of specified unlawful activities.”
“The Court, for the reasons set forth herein, adjudge and decree that the Defendant Asset be forfeited to the United States of America and disposed of in accordance with existing laws, together with costs, and for such other relief as this Court deems proper and just,” the complaint states.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower at 1 Central Park West in Manhattan.Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Trump’s properties, as The New York Times once said, “have a long history of serving as home to people with checkered pasts.”
Former federal prosecutor Kenneth McCallion, a onetime member of an organized crime strike force that investigated potential criminal activities during the construction of Trump Tower, told The Daily Beast that dirty money has long been attracted to Trump buildings.
“They’d pay cash for condos, held them for a few years, sold them, and the proceeds of the sale would then be clean money,” McCallion said.
Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier owned a unit in Trump Tower on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue; alleged Russian gangster David Bogatin—one of at least 13 Russian organized crime figures who have resided in the building—owned five.
A Trump development in Panama was “riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime,” according to a 2017 NBC News investigation.
What is “pink cocaine” or “tuci,” the drug Diddy allegedly had smuggled on a jet?
Manisha Krishnan – March 30, 2024
Sean Diddy Combs Paras Griffin/Getty Images
Among the many drugs Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly consumed — and had his staff procure for him — was tuci, an obscure street drug concoction nicknamed “pink cocaine,” according to a lawsuit filed by his former producer Rodney Jones.
Jones, who alleged Combs sexually assaulted him while he was producing Comb’s “The Love Album,” filed the $30 million lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan in February, amending it with additional allegations earlier this week.
Jones saId Combs’ chief of staff Kristina Khorram “required all employees, from the butler to the chef to the housekeepers, to walk around with a black Prada pouch or fanny pack filled with cocaine, GHB [a depressant drug], ecstasy [sometimes sold as MDMA], marijuana gummies (100 – 250 mg’s each), and tuci (a pink drug that is a combination of ecstasy and cocaine).”
“Khorram wanted Mr. Combs’ drug of choice immediately ready when he asked for it,” the lawsuit alleges.
Last April, Combs and Jones were rehearsing for the Something in the Water music festival in Virginia, when Jones alleged Combs did some cocaine in his dressing room and wanted tuci. However, Brendan Paul, Combs’ alleged drug mule who is facing felony drug possession charges, forgot to bring tuci, so Khorram had rapper Yung Miami fly the drug from Miami on Combs’ jet, according to the lawsuit.
Through his lawyer Shawn Holley, Combs denied the claims outlined in the initial lawsuit, describing them as “pure fiction.”
Tussi; Pink Cocaine
But what is tuci in the first place – and why is it popping off as a party drug in some circles?
The little-known drug has cropped up in the Latin American street drug supply over the last few years, typically sold as a neon pink powder, according to a 2022 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. While the name, also spelled tusi and tucci may be a shortened version of 2C-B — a stimulant and psychedelic first synthesized in the 1970s — tested samples of tuci typically don’t contain 2C-B, but rather a mix of ketamine, MDMA and caffeine. Despite being nicknamed “pink cocaine,” it rarely contains cocaine, though it is typically snorted.
While it’s hard to quantify how much tuci is entering the North American drug supply, it has been detected in Vancouver, New York, Miami and in several European countries. Services in Europe and Canada that test street drugs have issued alerts about tuci, warning people that it’s very difficult to predict its true contents.
“It can contain any drug. Every batch is different,” said U.K-based drug checking service the Loop, in a tuci warning to drug users in August 2022. “Be extra cautious if mixing drugs because you might not know how you will react to that mixture.”
In a text blast viewed by Salon, a New York-based dealer recently advised customers he was selling “something new” called “ducey,” which he described as “pink euphoric snow.” (Snow is a nickname for cocaine.)
Get Your Drugs Tested, a Vancouver-based harm reduction service, said a sample of tuci they tested last weekend came back positive for MDMA, ketamine and multiple benzodiazepines (sedative drugs like Xanax.)
A Toronto-based journalist, who requested anonymity, told Salon she frequently encountered people using tuci while backpacking in Medellin, Colombia in December.
“It was like a combination of stuff that dealers had leftover that wasn’t enough to make up a gram but they would combine it and dye it pink and make it marketable and then sell it,” she said.
At a party one night in late December, she said several people were on tuci and seemed “really happy.”
“It looked like an intense MDMA high, they were super sweaty, dancing,” she said.
However, one man in the group had a bad reaction to the drug, and was unable to stand or sit up straight for hours.
“His eyes were rolling to the back of his head,” she said. “He kept trying to throw up but he couldn’t throw up, couldn’t really get words out … That’s what kind of scared me.”
A 2023 VICE documentary on tuci in Medellin found sales of the drug was so lucrative there, it has spawned a new wave of traffickers dubbed neo-narcos, selling grams for $10 to $16 each. Matt Shea, the host of the documentary, uncovered how dyeing this random mixture of drugs pink is little more than marketing strategy concocted by cartels and described the substance as a “frankenstein drug.”
Jones’ lawsuit didn’t detail how often Combs consumed tuci, but said Khorram ordered her assistants to keep Combs “high” off gummies and pills. Jones also accused Combs and his associates, described by the lawsuit as “the Combs Rico Enterprise,” of procuring, transporting and distributing ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, mushrooms and tuci in and around the U.S.
While Paul has been arrested, and federal agents have raided two of Combs’ homes, Combs has not yet been charged with any crimes.
Adam Gopnik’s latest essay for The New Yorker explores how Adolf Hitler was able to rise to power in Nazi Germany—which happened largely because people believed they would be able to control him.
Gopnik tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie that the same could be said for Donald Trump leading into the 2024 election.
“You had this character who was regarded as a chaotic clown by everyone around him. The conservative minister of defense called him a psychopath,” he said. “Yet all of those people, the media moguls, the respectable conservatives, ended up aiding and abetting him in every way in his search for power and they did it in a way that is, yes, disconcertingly familiar to us.”
“They all thought they could manage him. They all thought they could control him. They all thought that they could take advantage of his movement for their own ends. And that on the day when it all blew up, because it had to blow up because he was a psychopath and clearly not capable of exercising power, they would be there to inherit,” he said.
Gopnik says that those who propped up Hitler believed they could “control the beast” and that they would “end up the ultimate victors.” However, as history shows, that wasn’t the case.
“Those patterns are frightening to see emerging again and again throughout history.”
In this article, we are going to discuss the top 20 tobacco growing countries in the world. You can skip our detailed analysis of the global tobacco market, the heavy investments in marketing by tobacco companies, and the rising popularity of flavored tobacco, and go directly to the Top 5 Tobacco Growing Countries in the World.
Tobacco was first used by the people of pre-Columbian Americas. Archeological studies suggest that the Maya people of Central America started using tobacco leaves as far back as the 1st century BC, mainly for smoking in sacred and religious ceremonies. By the time Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the Native Americans were already cultivating and smoking tobacco in pipes, cigars, and snuff. Although Cristopher Columbus brought with him a few tobacco leaves and seeds back to Europe, most Europeans didn’t get their first taste of the plant until the mid-16th century, when adventurers and diplomats like France’s Jean Nicot – for whom nicotine is named – began to popularize its use. Tobacco was introduced to France in 1556, Portugal in 1558, Spain in 1559, and finally England in 1565. By the early 17th century, smoking was common in all of Europe’s maritime nations, and their colonial empires soon carried tobacco all over the world.
Global Tobacco Market:
As we mentioned in our article – Top 20 Most Valuable Tobacco Companies in the World – the global tobacco market is expected to reach $1.049 trillion by 2030, with a CAGR of 2.1% during the forecast period. The market is fuelled by a growing demand from developing nations, coupled with the rising proliferation of next-generation products (NGPs) across the globe. The high marketing expenditure and discounting of products undertaken by major tobacco companies is also adding to the growth of the industry.
While tobacco consumption is leveling off and even decreasing in some countries, the number of people smoking is still increasing globally, and smokers are smoking more than before. An estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide use tobacco products, 80% of whom are in low- and middle-income countries.
Heavy Investments in Marketing:
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has led to widespread restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship around the world. This, coupled with the evidence of the causal role of marketing in the tobacco epidemic, has inspired more than half the countries worldwide to ban some forms of tobacco marketing.
Yet, tobacco companies have found creative ways to maneuver their way around these barriers, using a variety of marketing strategies to create demand for cigarettes and other tobacco products by urging the youth to experiment, reducing smokers’ motivation to quit, and encouraging former smokers to take it up again. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2020 alone, the American tobacco industry spent over $8.4 billion on marketing for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, spending more at the point-of-sale than anywhere else. They spent nearly $66 million on advertisements at the point of sale alone.
However, this hasn’t been without consequences. In September 2023, the e-cigarette company Juul, which at the height of its success dominated the market with its sweet flavors, agreed to pay $438.5 million in a settlement with 33 states and one territory over marketing its product to teens. The case ends major litigation over claims about the marketing of e-cigarettes to adolescents, resolving thousands of lawsuits and amounting to billions of dollars in payouts to states, cities, and people.
Sales of Juul products were sky high a few years ago and the company was even eyeing a market valuation of around $38 billion. However, it was discovered that Juul use among teens and young adults spiked heavily from 2018 to 2019. An estimated 27.5% of high schoolers reported using e-cigarettes during the period, with more than half naming Juul as their brand of choice. To add to the company’s woes, the FDA banned Juul products on U.S. shelves last summer, citing a lack of evidence demonstrating their overall safety. The regulator also noted Juul’s ‘disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping.’
The Rising Popularity of Flavored Tobacco:
Flavors improve the taste and mask the harshness of tobacco, making flavored tobacco products more appealing and easier to smoke for beginners, who are often young. In 2022, cigars were the second most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. middle and high school students. The availability of flavors in cigars that are prohibited in cigarettes (such as cherry), and the fact that they are commonly sold as a single stick, has raised concerns that these products may be especially appealing to youth. According to a 2021 survey by the CDC, among middle and high school students who smoked cigars in the previous 30 days, 44.4% reported using a flavored cigar during that time.
A popular name among the machine made, flavored cigars is Middleton’s Black and Mild. Designed for the occasional smoker, these pipe tobacco cigars boast a smoke smooth enough to satisfy an aficionado in a pinch. Owned by Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO), Black & Mild cigars are available in a variety of flavors like apple, cherry, cream, and more.
The John Middleton Co., a famous name in the pipe tobacco and machine cigars industry, was acquired by the Richmond-based Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO) in 2007 in a deal worth $2.9 billion, thus enabling the tobacco giant to break into the growing American cigar business as it tried to expand beyond the shrinking U.S. cigarette market. The net cost of the acquisition of Middleton, maker of Black & Mild cigars, from the privately held Bradford Holdings was $2.2 billion, after deducting $700 million in tax benefits arising from the deal.
With that said, here are the Largest Tobacco Growing Countries in the World.
Top 20 Tobacco Growing Countries in the World
Methodology:
To collect data for this article, we have referred to FAOSTAT, looking for the Countries that Grow the Most Tobacco. The following countries have been ranked by their respective land areas dedicated to tobacco production (measured in hectares) in 2021.
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20. Ivory Coast
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 15,979 ha
Ivory Coast is a significant producer and consumer of tobacco in Africa, with an estimated 9.4% of the adult population classified as smokers. However, the West African nation has taken significant steps to reduce the smoking rate among its people. In fact, Côte d’Ivoire became the first country in Africa to require plain packaging on tobacco products in 2022.
19. North Macedonia
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 16,617 ha
North Macedonia has a long tradition of cultivating and exporting oriental tobacco, mainly of the types Prilep, Jaka, and Basma. Due to the large number of families working in tobacco agriculture, it also receives the largest share of crop subsidies, comprising on average a quarter of total agricultural subsidies for the period 2008 – 2019.
18. Cuba
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 16,682 ha
Cuban cigars have long been a symbol of luxury and prestige, and the country produces some of the Most Expensive Cigars in the World. Due to consistently warm temperatures, high humidity, and regular rainfall, Cuba has excellent conditions for growing tobacco and it has been a mainstay crop for thousands of years.
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 21,059 ha
Tobacco leaves are produced in 20 provinces in the North and Northeast of Thailand and last year, around 50% of Thai tobacco farmers grew burley, while 26% grew turkish leaf, and 24% grew virginia leaf. Most of this produce supplies the local market, monopolized by the Tobacco Authority of Thailand under government supervision for setting quotas and producing cigarettes.
Thailand is included among the Top Producers of Tobacco in Asia.
16. Uganda
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 21,998 ha
Tobacco growing and manufacturing in Uganda was introduced in the 1920s by British American Tobacco, and around 75,000 of the nation’s farmers are now involved in tobacco agriculture, based mainly in the northwest and southwest of the country.
15. Philippines
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 28,380 ha
First introduced in the 1950’s, tobacco is widely grown in various provinces in the Philippines, with the industry supporting over 2 million jobs nationwide. The country exported 53% of its total tobacco produced in 2022, while 47% was supplied to local tobacco manufacturers.
14. Pakistan
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 47,332 ha
Although tobacco is grown on only about 0.23% of total irrigated land of Pakistan, the crop plays an important role in the country’s economy by generating income and employment for over 50,000 farmers in all four provinces. However, the total land area under tobacco cultivation has been rapidly decreasing over the last decade, mainly due to climate change and negligence by the government authorities.
13. Bangladesh
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 47,523 ha
The cultivation of tobacco is increasing alarmingly in Bangladesh, with the crop now being grown in every part of the country. Farmers are encouraged to continue and expand tobacco cultivation with various incentives, including loans and buyback guarantees.
12. Argentina
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 53,840 ha
Argentina stands among the Largest Tobacco Producers in South America, with the country producing 95.6 thousand tons in 2022, representing approximately 1.7% of the global production of tobacco of 5.8 million tons. Most of the tobacco cultivation happens in the north, with the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, and Misiones taking the lead.
11. North Korea
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 56,995 ha
The tobacco industry plays a significant role in the North Korean economy, with around 2.3% of the country’s total arable land dedicated to cultivating the cash crop. North Korea’s counterfeit cigarette production capacity is estimated to exceed two billion packs a year, and is a major source of income for the regime.
10. Tanzania
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 80,678 ha
Tobacco has been grown in Tanzania since the 1950s and is an important source of foreign exchange for the country. Tanzania produced 125 million kg of tobacco in 2023 and for the first
time, more than 50% of this produce was bought and sold abroad by local companies.
9. Turkey
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 83,166 ha
Tobacco was introduced to the Ottomans by the Spanish in the 17th century, and the country is now the world’s largest producer of aromatic oriental tobacco – a small-leafed variety which is sun-cured. Around 400,000 Turks are dependent on the tobacco industry for their livelihood.
8. Mozambique
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 91,469 ha
Tobacco cultivation has been considered a mainstay of Mozambique’s economy and the country exported $49.4 million of it in the first nine months of 2023, a quarter less than in the previous year. Most of this tobacco is grown in the regions of Tete and Niassa, representing over 89% of the country’s total production.
7. United States of America
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 95,730 ha
Although America has significantly decreased cultivating tobacco since the 1980s, it still ranks among the largest producers of the crop. North Carolina and Kentucky are the States that Grow the Most Tobacco in America.
Total Area Dedicated to Tobacco Production: 100,962 ha
Tobacco is the backbone of the Malawian economy, historically generating about 70% of the country’s export revenue and now accounting for over 50%. In 2015, tobacco farming took up more than 5% of all of Malawi’s farming land – the highest percentage anywhere in the world at that time.
Malawi ranks among the Largest Producers of Burley Tobacco in the World.
Conservative Judges Sound Alarm: Trump Will Shred Our Justice System
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – March 29, 2024
Donald Trump’s attacks on the judges and court staff overseeing his criminal trials have much deeper legal implications than petty fines. Instead, the attacks—and the responding “passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation”—are actively undermining the entire judicial system, prominent conservative judges are warning.
In a CNN interview Thursday evening, Republican-appointed federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton felt compelled to announce that Trump’s continued attacks could result in “tyranny.” Just hours later, former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, also a conservative, issued his own warning cry, declaring that Trump is responsible for the “dismantling” of the nation’s “system of justice.”
“The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man—the former President of the United States,” started Luttig in a multipart thread on X.
“In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgivable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.”
“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.”
Luttig also warned that Trump isn’t accomplishing the task alone. It’s the complicit Supreme Court—and the American people—that are letting Trump get away with it.
“It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same,” he added. “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”
Here was Walton’s own dire warning:
Senior Judge Reggie Walton: “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law & we believe in the rule of law & the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.” pic.twitter.com/V1GC7LVD2g
‘Humbling, and a bit worrying’: Scientists fail to fully explain record global heat
Hayley Smith – March 27, 2024
The sun sets over Huntington Beach at the end of a hot December day in 2023. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Deadly heat in the Southwest. Hot-tub temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Sweltering conditions in Europe, Asia and South America.
That 2023 was Earth’s hottest year on record was in some ways no surprise. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about rapidly rising temperatures driven by humanity’s relentless burning of fossil fuels.
But last year’s sudden spike in global temperatures blew far beyond what statistical climate models had predicted, leading one noted climate scientist to warn that the world may be entering “uncharted territory.”
“It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a recent article in the journal Nature.
Now, he and other researchers are scrambling to explain why 2023 was so anomalously hot. Many theories have been proposed, but “as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened,” Schmidt wrote.
Misters spray water on a young boy at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., as as temperatures approached 100 degrees in June 2023. (Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)
Last year’s global average temperature of 58.96 degrees Fahrenheit was about a third of a degree warmer than the previous hottest year in 2016, and about 2.67 degrees warmer than the late 1800s pre-industrial period against which global warming is measured.
While human-caused climate change and El Niño can account for much of that warming, Schmidt and other experts say the extra three or four tenths of a degree is harder to account for.
Theories for the increase include a 2020 change in aerosol shipping regulations designed to help improve air quality around ports and coastal areas, which may have had the unintended consequence of enabling more sunlight to reach the planet.
The 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano also shot millions of tons of water vapor into the stratosphere, which scientists say helped to trap some heat. What’s more, a recent uptick in the 11-year solar cycle may have contributed about a tenth of a degree of additional warning.
But these factors alone cannot explain what’s happening, Schmidt said.
“Even after taking all plausible explanations into account, the divergence between expected and observed annual mean temperatures in 2023 remains about 0.2 °C — roughly the gap between the previous and current annual record,” he wrote in his report.
Heat ripples from hot asphalt in downtown Phoenix in July 2023. (Matt York / Associated Press)
Reached by phone, Schmidt said he thinks one of three things could be going on.
It’s possible that 2023 was a “blip” — a perfect storm of natural variables and Earth cycles lining up to create one freakishly hot year. Should that prove to be the case, “it won’t have huge implications for what we’re going to see in the future, because it would have been just such a rare and unlikely thing that is not going to happen again anytime soon,” he said.
However, he indicated that’s unlikely, as those elements “have never lined up to give us a blip this large.”
Another possibility is that scientists have misunderstood the driving forces of climate change. While greenhouse gases, volcanic eruptions and aerosols are known to affect global temperatures, perhaps the full extent of their effects have been underestimated or miscalibrated. Should that be the case, he said, research and data sets will hopefully catch up soon.
The last explanation he offered is that the system itself is changing — and changing in ways that are faster and less predictable than previously understood.
“That would be worrying because science is really all about taking information from the past, looking at what’s going on, and making predictions about the future,” Schmidt said. “If we can’t really trust the past, then we have no idea what’s going to happen.”
Not everyone agrees with his assessment, however. Michael Mann, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, said the premise that 2023’s warmth cannot be explained — or that it is inconsistent with model simulations — is “simply wrong.”
“The situation is extremely similar to what we saw during the 2014-2016 period as we transitioned from several years of La Niña conditions to a major El Niño event, and then back to La Niña,” Mann said in an email.
In fact, he said some recent modeling shows the global temperature spike in 2016 was even more of an outlier than that of 2023.
“The plot shows that the surface warming of the planet is proceeding almost precisely as predicted,” Mann said. “And the models show that the warming will continue apace as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels and generate carbon pollution.”
When asked about this interpretation, Schmidt said it’s true that the 2014 to 2016 period was similarly anomalous. But there is a key difference between then and now, he said.
The 2016 temperature spike came on the heels of an El Niño event, with the biggest anomalies in February, March and April of the year following its peak, he said. He noted that similar patterns occurred after previous El Niños in 1998 and 1942.
Conversely, last year’s spike arrived in August, September, October and November — before the peak of El Niño — “and that has never happened before,” Schmidt said. “It never happened in the temperature record that we have. It doesn’t happen in the climate models.”
Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA, said he largely agrees with Schmidt’s assessment that the hypothesized factors alone can’t account for the large temperature anomaly experienced in 2023 and early 2024. He likened it to the emergence of megafires, or extreme wildfires, in the last decade, which wasn’t entirely foreseen.
“What we’ve learned is that there’s an aspect of this that isn’t fully predictable — that we don’t fully understand — and that we are tempting fate here a little bit by continuing to interfere with the climate system,” Hall said. “It’s going to do things that we don’t understand, that we don’t anticipate, and those are going to have potentially big impacts.”
Hall said the rapid transition from a persistent La Niña to a strong El Niño last summer likely played a role, as did the change in aerosol regulations.
He also posited that the rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice in 2023 — itself an outcome of the warmer planet and oceans — could have created a kind of feedback loop that contributed to more warming. Ice and snow are reflective, so when they melt, it can result in a darker ocean that absorbs more heat and sunlight. (Antarctic sea ice coverage dropped to a record low in 2023, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
“It’s sort of a planetary emergency for us to figure out what’s going on when we see these types of changes,” Hall said. “There should be large teams of people working on it to try to understand it, and we don’t really have those kinds of efforts, so I think there’s lessons, too, for the need for focus on this particular topic.”
Tourists seek shade and water while visiting the Acropolis of Athens during a heat wave in July 2023. (Petros Giannakouris / Associated Press)
While he and other scientists may not agree on just how extraordinary 2023 was — or what was behind its exceptional warmth — they all acknowledged the clear signs of a planet being pushed to its limits.
“I think it’s unfortunate that so much has been made of the El Niño-spiked 2023 global temperatures, where in my view there is nothing surprising, or inconsistent with model predictions, there,” said Mann. “There are much better, scientifically-sound reasons to be concerned about the unfolding climate crisis — particularly the onslaught of devastating weather extremes, heat waves, wildfires, floods, drought, which by some measures are indeed exceeding model predictions.”
Last year was marked by extreme weather events, with more billion-dollar disasters in the United States than any other year, according to NOAA. Among them were the Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii in August; Hurricane Idalia in Florida that same month; and severe flooding in New York in September.
Already this year, January and February have continued the global hot streak, marking nine consecutive months of a record-breaking temperatures.
In his Nature article, Schmidt said the inexplicable elements of the recent warming have revealed an “unprecedented knowledge gap” in today’s climate monitoring, which drives home the need for more nimble data collection that can keep up with the pace of change.
He noted it may take researchers months or even years to unpack all the factors that could have played a part in the sizzling conditions.
“We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years,” he wrote. “And we need them quickly.”
Though El Niño is expected to wane this summer, there is still a 45% chance that this year will be warmer than 2023, according to NOAA.
It is a near certainty however that 2024 will rank among the five hottest years on record — so far.
