Would You Want Your 12-Year-Old Child Picking Tobacco?

Would You Want Your 12-Year-Old Child Picking Tobacco?

Would You Want Your 12-Year-Old Child Picking Tobacco?

Fusion and the Nation I-Fund report on the thousands of child farmworkers laboring in American tobacco fields. 

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

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

Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign

With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x