Smoking kills… everyone knows that, especially due to the nice reminder on each cigarette box you can buy. Most smokers don’t seem to care about it too much, they might think: oh well, someday we are all gonna die anyways…
@ all the smokers: do you know where your tobacco comes from???
One of the biggest tobacco producing countries is Malawi. You could assume that the people there would live fairly well, considering the huge profits the tobacco companies make every year…. but that’s just not the case. Instead, many people live in a modern kind of slavery as the UN says. The families working in the tobacco industry have to fulfil a daily quota of tobacco the farm owner has demanded of them, because they’ve been forced to borrow money from the land owner and can’t leave until they work off their debt. But in order to fulfil this quota they are forced to employ their children! For example, a family of seven that works 7 days a week from dawn to dust makes as much as around 22€ a year!!! Children as young as 3 are already employed!! Child labor is illegal in Malawi, but the reality unfortunately still shows a different picture….
The children working on the tobacco plantations suffer from severe headaches typically for green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning, where high doses of nicotine are absorbed through the skin. In other tobacco producing countries like the USA, workers advised to wear protective clothing…
The tobacco industry knows about the problems with child labor. What do they do???
Well, of course they all claim to do something against it… but in fact they do very little! They have spent only $6.6 million (their turnover was ca. $173 billion in 2009!!!) over eight years in projects to improve education, sanitation, health and crop planting that are keeping children in school, but the project works with only 2 of the 28 states of Malawi!!!
So isn’t that another reason to stop smoking???
Despite the fact that smoking is a really bad habit, I don’t believe that it would help the children in Malawi when we would stop smoking. I think the companies are producing there because they find people willing to work under these circumstances. If this wouldn’t be the case they would have to improve the working conditions. But since people seem to be very poor there they cannot afford to loose the job. And that is the problem. If we would all stop smoking the tobacco industry probably leaves Malawi. And so the children would be healthier but have maybe nothing to eat because there is no job they can do anymore to support their family.
For us it is crime what companies do there to their employees, but I think people are better with these companies otherwise they wouldn’t work there.
I personally believe that if there is no demand for one product there is simply no reason for supply.christininberlin says his opinion and in some parts looks reasonable.Bear in mind that if the smokers decrease drastically, then tabaco industry will have to adjust their outputs which will lead to less operating factories.
P.S. this is not the only possible statement but a economical one.
I somewhat agree with the first comment. I do think that is the company wasnt there then it would be hard to find work. Even if there are horrible risks and low wages, it is still work and it is still earning money to help pay for familes food and other neccisities. However, I do believe the power of education to be one much greater of that of money. When you educate a person you are teaching them to survive. It’s like the old saying give a person a fish feed them for a day, teach them to fish and feed them for a life time. So if we educate the people of Malawi then who knows what they could be able to accomplish.