Given the recent history of the tobacco industry, it is remarkable how optimistic independent leaf tobacco dealers seem to be. And theirs is not an unthinking optimism; it is based on a critical analysis of the often-specialized sectors in which they operate—along with a willingness to try to intervene to change things wherever such change is appropriate. But then, I suppose, it has to be thus. How else could these companies, some of them with long histories, have survived within an industry dominated by major corporations and under—mainly indirect—attack from powerful anti-tobacco forces and within an industry faced in the recent past by competition from next-generation products that are on only nodding terms with traditional leaf tobacco?
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