American 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes. Why can they work in tobacco fields?

[Judi Lynn]

Reid Maki
US law allows children to work for wages in toxic tobacco fields. We urge the tobacco industry to raise the minimum age to 18


It’s no surprise that working in tobacco fields is dangerous. Smoking tobacco kills 6 to 7 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization. The same nicotine that makes tobacco so dangerous – and addictive – harms workers in tobacco fields. What is a surprise to many is that child workers are among those harmed and the United States allows 12-year-olds to work for wages in toxic tobacco fields where children are exposed to nicotine and toxic pesticides.

When the seminal legislation the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, it exempted agriculture from its extensive labor protections, including child labor. Most analysts agree that racism played a part in this decision – many agricultural workers were poor black people and the southern congressional leaders who controlled many committees had little interest in protecting them from labor abuses.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), whom we partner with on the US-based Child Labor Coalition, has confirmed that tobacco work is too dangerous for teen workers. Its 2014 report, Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in United States Tobacco Farming, featured the results of interviews of 140 child tobacco workers and found the majority had suffered symptoms that correlated with frequent bouts of “green tobacco sickness” – essentially nicotine poisoning.

The child laborers described nausea, dizziness, fatigue and other symptoms that left them feeling “like you’re going to die”. It’s clear that children absorb nicotine while they work from residue on tobacco leaves and from particulates in the air, but just how much is uncertain. Estimates differ from the equivalent of smoking six cigarettes a day to smoking over 30. The long-term impact of that absorption is not yet known.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/28/tobacco-field-workers-cigarettes-work

[Docreed2003]

1. I grew up on a tobacco farm in the south

Working my part on that farm was just considered a normal part of life, and I started out helping at a very young age...much younger than 12.

Most places here, used to cut tobacco during late August in some of the hottest days of the year. The combination of sweat and tobacco leaves assured absorption of nicotine.

Thanks for sharing this article!

[SunSeeker]

2. Yep, my husband worked in a tobacco field one summer when he was a kid.

He said he got a horrible rash from handling the stuff.

[Docreed2003]

3. As the youngest and most agile

I was the one who climbed up in the barn and healed to hang racks of tobacco! That was after I had sweated and absorbed God know how much nicotine as we cut those leaves to hang.

It's so crazy that I could despise an institution while st the same time respect that same institution that I came from!

[SunSeeker]

4. People naturally love their home, and tobacco was part of that home.

When my husband was picking tobacco, it was a respected All-American industry, and had been since the founding of our country. Those are tobacco leaves carved out of marble that form the decorative floral scrolls at the top of the columns at the U.S. Capitol and Jefferson's Monticello.

My husband's summer picking tobacco was before the Surgeon General Warning...and before undeniable science became widely known about what tobacco did to people. And OSHA.

My husband said the scariest was hanging tobacco in the rafters. He could barely spread his short legs far enough apart to straddle the rafters, all while pulling up 40-50 lb. sticks of tobacco.

[Docreed2003]

5. Hanging tobaccco in the rafters of our barn

...that was my specialty as a child!! I had no issue climbing into the rafters of the barn and hanging tobacco! That was my job and it was expected...

[SunSeeker]

6. You must have been a big, strong kid for your age.

My husband was was a tiny little guy. With very short legs. He almost had to do the splits to stay on the rafters. And there was no net if you fell!

[Judi Lynn]

7. Thanks to Docreed2003 and SunSeeker for the posts on children working in tobacco production.

So many US Americans have never known this ever happened.

Shockingly dangerous for any young person, or older person, as well.