The world loves to hate tobacco but this widely grown fumitory crop could help to save the world from what looks increasingly like an impending biofuel disaster, owing to completely misguided strategies. As the world rushes for renewable resources, relishing the prospect of more carbon-friendly energy sources, scientists are taking a second look at biofuels, because they look distinctly less carbon-friendly or environmentally sustainable than first appeared. Tobacco is one of the world's most widely spread and ubiquitous crops. Tobacco is grown in particular areas and soils for the very reason they are suited and the crop does well, and by farmers who can claim five, six or more generations having grown the same crop on the same farm. It makes no sense to abandon such stability. Alternative uses for tobacco, whether biomass for biofuel, feedstock for power stations or resources for chemical extraction is clearly the way forward. These were arguments used in Maryland, US, where tobacco grown and cured for smoking has dwindled to virtually nothing in the last few years, following a political decision made in the first decade of the twenty-first century on a crop grown commercially since the first decade of the seventeenth century.