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by Margaret Wurth
The Guardian
Cigarette makers can't market to kids. Why do tobacco farms employ them?
Grace, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, doesn't smoke – at 15, she's too young to buy a pack of cigarettes, anyway – but she might as well have had a regular habit. At her job on a tobacco farm last summer, she handled tobacco plants for up to 12 hours a day, steadily absorbing nicotine through her skin.
Though precise numbers are hard to come by, it's fairly common to find kids working on US tobacco farms in the summer months (the height of the growing season). Yet while the US has laws to protect kids from the harms of nicotine in cigarettes, there are no restrictions to protect them from nicotine exposure in tobacco fields – despite evidence that such exposure may be especially harmful to children, whose brains and bodies are still developing.
Take Action! Tell Tobacco Companies to End Child Labor on Tobacco Farms. >>
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