tobacco-2-2011.jpgThe 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.


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  1. This is one of my major issues with gov’t worker pensions. they should be made to adhere to the Rule of 80 like every pension in the private sector.

    The Democratic politicians lined their pockets with union $ and gave away the farm and now you all are paying for it.

  2. Fran Lebowitz is very funny about current attitudes to smoking, she compares the anti-smoking rhetoric of today to the anti-homosexuality rhetoric of her youth especially the “second hand effects on children.”
    Just being near a homosexual in those days was considered very dangerous.

  3. “I make meatballs,” Ms. Silk said, by way of explanation. “My recipe is a four-hour ordeal. My biggest loved ones do not get any. When I have to put a lot of work into something, I don’t share.”

    she also sounds like a b@%#*

  4. “Ms. Silk, 46, a retired police officer”

    WTF?! why does she get to retire so young, sit around her house growing, smoking and (i presume) living off pension checks via the taxpayers?!

    i get it if for some reason she can’t work the beat or drive a car and chase criminals (probably because of all the fucking cigs she smokes!) but couldn’t they at least KEEP HER WORKING? some sort of desk job?

    unions are so out of control and have no problem rubbing it in everyone’s face. pathetic.

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