While the legal age to purchase tobacco products may be 18, children as young as 10 are working in American tobacco fields. This dispatch by Fusion, reported in partnership with the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, provides an in-depth look at the hazards of tobacco farming, including nicotine poisoning and “green tobacco sickness.” As Rayner Ramirez reports, some 400,000 children work on US farms every year to help support their families, most of whom live below the poverty line. For more on the conditions faced by child farmworkers, see Gabe Thompson’s investigative piece for The Nation.
—Allegra Kirkland