Tobacco: Kids can’t smoke it, but they can pick it in NC

By Stephanie Carson
Public News Service-NC

GREENSBORO — Children half the legal smoking age reportedly are laboring in tobacco fields in North Carolina.

It’s hard to tell how many or how old they are, but a study by Oxfam America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) found one in ten working in North Carolina tobacco fields is younger than 18.

Photo by Marcus Bleasdale — Human Rights Watch Some children working with tobacco plants wear trash bags to protect themselves from absorbing nicotine from the wet leaves. Kids are especially vulnerable to what's known as green tobacco sickness, essentially the nicotine poisoning of a non-smoker with the blood nicotine level of a pack-a-day habit.

Photo by Marcus Bleasdale — Human Rights Watch
Some children working with tobacco plants wear trash bags to protect themselves from absorbing nicotine from the wet leaves. Kids are especially vulnerable to what’s known as green tobacco sickness, essentially the nicotine poisoning of a non-smoker with the blood nicotine level of a pack-a-day habit.

FLOC president Baldemar Velasquez said children who work to help their families get by typically start in their early teens – but sometimes much younger.

“Seven, eight on up,” he said. “We’ve seen kids this summer that were 13, 15 – and they’d tell us they’d worked in tobacco for seven years, five years.”

The major tobacco companies all have policies against child labor, but a federal loophole intended for farm families leaves the practice in a legal gray area. Most growers insist they obey the law, to the best of their ability.

Velasquez said he worked harvesting tobacco as a teen, and started with his family at age 6, adding that “it was either that or not eating.”

Families, often here illegally and paid low wages, are at the mercy of labor contractors, Velasquez said, adding that economic pressures mean farm owners and cigarette companies look the other way when crew leaders break the law.

“Doesn’t matter to the crew leader, the labor contractor, because he gets the money from the harvest,” Velasquez said. “He doesn’t care how small the hands are that are putting the cut tobacco on the trailer, as long as the acres get done.”

According to a separate report from Human Rights Watch, half of tobacco workers make less than minimum wage. It found 12-hour days are common and 16-hour days not unusual. The reports say the kids especially are vulnerable to green tobacco sickness, a type of nicotine poisoning. Velasquez said he remembers getting dizzy and nauseous, with high blood nicotine levels.

“When you try to eat, nothing tastes right,” he said. “Workers say they try to drink milk ’cause it’s the only thing that they can consume when you get really, really sick.”

Off the farms, the United States eliminated most child labor decades ago. Velasquez said the fights that unions won in the mills of North Carolina still have to be fought in the tobacco fields.

“These are symptoms of a broader labor problem,” he said. “We used to have children in the mines of America, textile mills of America. When unions were formed, they negotiated away those conditions.”

The Oxfam/FLOC report is online at oxfamamerica.org, and the HRW report is at hrw.org.

Filed in: Latest Headlines

You might like:

M. Bishop sinks putt for Mixed Division playoff win M. Bishop sinks putt for Mixed Division playoff win
Von Hagel wins drawing for Pixel Von Hagel wins drawing for Pixel
Application period open for club sponsorship Application period open for club sponsorship
S. Farris wins Player of the Year S. Farris wins Player of the Year
© 2024 AlleganyPlayground.com. All rights reserved. XHTML / CSS Valid.