FROM THE ARCHIVES:Dáil committee recommended a cut in excise duty on Irish grown tobacco in 1926 from 6s.8d to 5s per ounce in the hopes of reviving the industry but The Irish Times reckoned that even those willing to die for Ireland would not smoke the home-grown weed for it.
- JOE JOYCE
Irish-grown tobacco has at least one merit. The subject of its encouragement can be discussed without any lapse into those passions which normally are provoked by the issues of protection and free trade. A certain sentiment in most Irishmen – even in those who would not smoke Irish tobacco, or do not smoke at all – favours this native industry, which, during the centuries has seen so many vicissitudes of fortune.
At present, as the report tells us, the industry is on the verge of extinction. When it was revived in 1898 the extent of Irish soil under tobacco increased steadily until it reached a maximum of 217¾ acres. Then the acreage began to decline, and to-day it has shrunk to the meagre proportions of 15¾ acres. The chief cause of the industry’s decay was the arrival of imperial preference in 1919; for the preference of 2s per lb put our native product into hopeless competition with Indian and Colonial tobacco, raised by labour to which trade union wages and the eight hours’ day are unknown. In these circumstances the Dáil’s Committee has been asked to suggest means whereby the Irish industry may be revived and strengthened.
The Committee has done its work carefully: its survey is judicious, and we believe that Irishmen of all shades of economic thought would welcome the success of its plans. Frankly, however, we are not optimists in the matter; for the whole position is governed by the mysterious element of taste, and of all tastes the taste in tobacco is most imperative. A man may be induced to wear clothes that he dislikes or to eat food that he dislikes, and one of Disraeli’s characters says, “I rather like bad wine: one gets so bored with good wine”; but no man will smoke tobacco that he dislikes.
During the last thirty years Irish-grown tobacco has failed to win the smoker’s patronage. His palate rejects it, and that obstacle is not likely to be overcome by a reduction of one penny, or even of two pence, in the price per ounce.
Many men would die for Ireland who would refuse to smoke for her. It is their knowledge of this fact which makes the big manufacturers and all the Irish retailers so coldly indifferent to the future of the industry. We think, therefore, that the best hope for native tobacco lies not in tariffs, but in the agricultural laboratory: if it is to prosper, science must remould it nearer to the mouth’s desire.
Of course, there is an alternative solution. The Free State Government could make the smoking of Irish tobacco compulsory by law and a condition of all appointments to the public service. In any other country this suggestion might seem to be absurd; but here the case of the Irish language furnishes a sober precedent.
http://url.ie/aalu