[cglace]

But they don't have to grow it.

[TylerE]

But they still have to buy it from people who do, and the difficulty is reflected in raw material prices.

From http://www.nasda.org/File.aspx?id=48147

Types of Tobacco & December 2016 Avg. Price/lb. – Flue Cured $5.12 – Fire Cured $7.25 – Burley $5.09 – Maryland $4.86 – Dark Air Cured $6.54 – Pennsylvania Seedleaf $5.23

For comparison, wheat is around $6 per bushel. A bushel is 56 lbs.

[cglace]

You can get roughly 22 packs of cigarettes from a pound of tobacco. Lets say RJ Reynolds sells those packs for 2.50 wholesale. 22 * 2.50 = 55. 10x the cost of a lb of tobacco doesn't seem too bad.