How Our Tobacco Habit Kills Malawian Children

Malawi's children are being slowly killed by tobacco, but not tobacco they're smoking.  They're being killed by tobacco those of us in the U.S. and Europe are smoking.  That's because Malawi's booming and dangerous tobacco industry is a huge exploiter of child labor, all in the name of serving a Western nicotine addiction.

In Malawi, 78,000 children, some as young as five, work 12-hour days to produce cigarettes.  Some are literally paid pennies an hour for this difficult labor.  Few earn what would be considered a "living wage."  But for Malawian children in the tobacco industry, the lack of fair pay is the least of their worries.  On a humid day (of which Malawi has several), the average child worker can be exposed to up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine- the equivalent of 32 cigarettes!  These kids are reaping the heath consequences of a pack-and-a-half-a-day habit without ever lighting up.  One teen boy described the health problems as such,    

We even carry on coughing at home. It starts as a little cough, but it goes on for a long time. Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath, you don't have enough oxygen.  Yes, you reach a point where you cannot breathe in because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes and you vomit, you vomit blood. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache.

The relationship that Malawi has with tobacco is rooted, if dysfunctional and incestuous.  Tobacco is Malawi's biggest export, and accounts for about 70 percent of their income from exports.  Malawi is the fifth largest producer of tobacco in the world.  So where does all this tobacco from Malawi go? Mostly, to the U.S. and Europe.

On the Philip Morris website, they claim that they "do not condone the unlawful employment or exploitation of children in the workplace, nor do we condone forced labor."  However, they also don't list where their tobacco is sourced from or any specific regulations they require their suppliers to meet.  Their Child and Forced Labor Policy is about as firm and healthy as the lungs of a lifetime smoker.  And Philip Morris is just one company- tobacco companies all over the world buy Malawian tobacco.

Is it shocking that tobacco companies care as much about the health of the Malawian children who produce their products as they do about the Western children who smoke their products? Not really. Is it one more reason not to light up? Definitely. 

Image from ottowacitizen.com