Claire Hiebert
Mr. Helmuth
Environmental Club
March 15, 2009

Harvesting Death

Tobacco kills more than the people who use it. Many tobacco farmers worldwide die each year because of their crop, and not just from consuming it.
Tobacco companies target workers in developing countries (such as Malawi and Sri Lanka) for cheap labor. The farmers are persuaded to grow tobacco because they are told it would yield more money than their food crops. As a result, many farmers clear their fields and trees to plant tobacco. Because they cannot afford hired workers, they have their children help with the farming.
Tobacco requires more water and labor hours than food crops and must have many applications of pesticides and other chemicals to protect it. The farmers are often given bottles of pesticides that are labeled in languages they do not understand and so they don? know the health risks or how to handle it properly. When the tobacco is grown, farmers pick the leaves without using any safety gear, because they can? afford it. The accumulated chemicals and nicotine (which grows in tobacco naturally as well as being added later) are absorbed into their skin. This gives them Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS) which causes weakness and nausea and can be fatal if not treated. When tobacco is being cured by drying leaves over a fire, farmers breathe in toxic fumes and smoke.
After the farmers are done growing the tobacco, they are in debt with tobacco companies because of the seeds, chemicals, and tools they borrowed. Not only are they indebted to the tobacco companies, but their soil is leached of nutrients and poisoned by chemicals; the soil can now only sustain tobacco plants. They have no choice but to continue growing tobacco and have no food crops or money to buy food. Farmers have been known to drink the pesticides as a means of suicide. Therefore tobacco users are hurting more than themselves: they are hurting the impoverished farmers who grow it.