Cigarettes: Bad for Workers, Bad for You
Published July 03, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Big Tobacco can't seem to catch a break these days, poor guys. First everyone starts banning smoking in public because it kills people. Then everyone starts taxing cigarettes because they kill people. And now, all around the world, migrant workers who pick tobacco are making ridiculous requests, like to be paid fairly for their work and not be exposed to deadly chemicals. Poor Big Tobacco!
There is the potential for exploitation in any industry which employs large numbers of migrant workers, and tobacco is no exception. In Malawi, child labor and forced labor have been identified throughout the tobacco industry. In India, children are often enslaved in factories rolling small, unfiltered cigarettes called bidis. Even in the U.S., workers have complained about mistreatment at the hands of employers while picking tobacco.
When I first started researching this issue, I assumed that tobacco is that it is one of the few consumer products which doesn't have a more fair or more sustainable option. Wrong! The UK recently released an ethically-sourced cigarette, which actually gives a portion of the proceeds to support disadvantaged Native American workers. This unexpected dichotomy boggled my progressive brain which commonly defaults to: tobacco=bad, fair trade=good. But what happens when they join forces? My dilemma is illustrated by the contrast between the shiny happy feel-good interracial handshake logo and the giant "SMOKING KILLS" warning on the ethically sourced cigarettes above. Weird.
Can an ethically sourced cigarette be a good thing? Is it just Big Tobacco pushing their addictive, deadly products on children and exploiting their workers which makes the industry terrible, or is it the product itself? Is there a place for small tobacco or fair tobacco? It seems to me that no matter how much the farmers are paid, no matter how much the exploitation is reduced, at the end of the day, it's still a cancer stick.
Image from guardian.co.uk
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Comments (2)
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Author
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Amanda has been a full-time abolitionist for six years. During that time, she has created reports, documentaries and training materials on human trafficking in the United States and around the world.
That is weird. It made me laugh. I guess as long as tobacco is still legal (and I'm assuming one day it won't be because, unlike most drugs, nicotine is a neurotransmitter that goes straight to the synapses and is the hardest addiction to quit), it might as well be fair trade. As long as workers don't become even more dependent on the work financially. But if they're being paid more they'll have more energy to think about alternatives, right?
I don't think fair trade will increase the rate of addiction, since most smokers don't care (though I had one friend who insisted that organic tobacco doesn't cause cancer - it was a phase she went through). I think it's good to see workers protected at the same time authorities are trying to protect consumers from dangerous products.
Posted by Anemone Cerridwen on 07/03/2009 @ 07:28AM PT
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Take a look into Electronic Cigarettes no Tobacco! Not produced by Big Tabacco, No smoke, still feel like your smoking. A cigarette that could give all smokers a much safer alternative. You don't need to kill your self to smoke your cigarette!
Posted by Keith Rasmussen on 10/18/2009 @ 11:06AM PT
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