We stopped subsidizing tobacco farming. The result? Tobacco farming’s on the rise.

When President Obama signed legislation in mid-June to bring tobacco under FDA regulation, few seemed outraged that the legislation had been co-written by Philip Morris USA (PM). The bill was designed, critics say, to stabilize the place of cigarettes in our society: to diminish the threat of health-related lawsuits, to prevent competitive yet possibly safer products from being introduced, and to lock in Philip Morris' market share. It's not just the Harvard School of Public Health leveling these charges but even Sen. Bob Bennett, Republican of Utah, a supporter of the intent of the bill who was nonetheless "convinced we would do better if we told Philip Morris to stay out of the process of writing tobacco legislation."

But the bill Obama signed is actually the second half of a legislative push, or maybe a putsch, that Philip Morris and its parent, Altria (MO), have been shepherding through Congress for more than a decade. In 2004, President Bush signed the first half of the legislation, which had to do with tobacco production rather than consumption. That bill, the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004, eliminated the quota system for tobacco farmers that had been in place since the 1930s. Similar to its other crop insurance programs, the government had created a system to guarantee a minimum price for tobacco farmers by limiting the amount that could be grown each year.

In what is a familiar refrain, the buyout was sold to Congress and anti-smoking groups as something that was necessary to help impoverished small tobacco farmers get out of the business. "Tens of thousands of farmers will struggle to survive and many, including whole communities, will not make it," testified Matthew Myers, head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and an early supporter of the bill. (He withdrew his support once the buyout was uncoupled from the FDA legislation for that year.) In 2004 it was Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, who tried to pull back the curtain. He said at the time, "The House buyout plan is an incredible rip-off of the taxpayer, mostly to benefit a handful of large tobacco interests and tobacco companies."

Five years after the tobacco buyout, and with the second prong of tobacco legislation newly passed, it's worth checking in. As with other crops, the government had for years been paying some farmers not to grow tobacco to maintain prices for those who did. By the time 2004 rolled around, nearly 85 percent of tobacco permit holders weren't growing tobacco at all. The permits were being bought and sold for their annual cash payments, like some sort of strange tobacco bond. The quota system, which could have been used to end domestic tobacco production altogether, worked in that it kept prices high and kept small farmers in business.

Under the law, the USDA, which had paid billions to permit holders for nearly 60 years, had to end the quota system. A "user fee," or tax, of $9.6 billion was levied on tobacco companies and paid for the buyout.

One might think the impoverished tobacco farmer is still down there in Marlboro country, wandering his barren plantation, as if Sherman himself had risen only to come and burn it all over again. Or that the buyout helped reduce the use of American farmland to grow tobacco, especially given the recent price spikes in food crops, like wheat, soybeans, and corn. One would think provisions were put in place to help permanently reduce the amount of tobacco production in the United States. But one would be wrong.