KEYSVILLE, VA. — Like generations of family before him, Steven Bailey grew up with tobacco. The leafy plants thrive in Virginia's rich clay soil, and one of his earliest memories is of watching his mother work the fields, surrounded by plants as high as her shoulders.
So imbued with the tobacco culture was Bailey that in the 1990s -- recently married and expecting his first child -- he took a gamble: Despite all the evidence of health risks and the increasing government efforts to curb smoking and regulate manufacturers, he joined his father in taking the giant step of beginning to make their own cigarettes.
The idea could have bankrupted the family. Instead, it has paid off handsomely. Bailey's "Freedom of Choice" cigarettes are sold from Florida to Delaware. The company, based in this sleepy farm town of 800, is thriving and has expanded into new products, including a smokeless brand.
The Baileys' successful plunge reflects the enduring hold cigarettes have on smokers as well as the lobbying power of the tobacco industry and Congress' sympathy for small business, almost regardless of the product.
The push for stricter tobacco regulation has caused the family some anxious moments -- most recently over the current congressional effort to allow the Food and Drug Administration to subject cigarettes to federal standards intended to reduce the ill effects of smoking.
But now, after some adroit lobbying, the bill has been modified to cushion and delay the impact on small producers. As it stands, the Baileys believe, even FDA supervision would be manageable.
If there's a cloud on the horizon, it's not government regulation. With the passage of time, said Steven Bailey, 37, he has begun to worry about the consequences of his own smoking. "Ten years ago, I was invincible," he said. But as Bailey's hair has begun to gray, he has been pondering his own mortality -- and the example he sets for his children.
He has begun to think about quitting.
It was in 1994 -- as Bailey and his father, Mac, were returning from a lucrative buying trip to the Pennsylvania's Amish Country -- that they decided to roll the dice. In addition to growing their own crop, the Baileys made money buying and reselling tobacco to the big manufacturers. But Mac had often dreamed of making his own brand of cigarettes.
