FRANKFORT, Ky. — Last May, a report was released by the Human Rights Watch titled Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in United States Tobacco Farming. The report featured interviews of child tobacco workers that were conducted in Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, the four largest tobacco-producing states in the country. 

The report noted that those interviewed complained of health symptoms “consistent with acute nicotine poisoning, known as Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS),” a condition often associated with handling green, wet tobacco when nicotine is then absorbed through the skin.

Since then, many people including a collection of legislators have voiced concern over the use of children under the age of 16 in tobacco fields.

U.S. Reps. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania and David Cicilline of Rhode Island topped the list of 35 lawmakers who sent a letter to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez asking him to consider enacting a regulation that would prohibit children from working in the cultivation or curing of tobacco. 

“Current law allows 16- and 17-year-olds to work on farms under hazardous conditions, while the minimum age elsewhere is 18,” The letter stated. “Unfortunately, the Department’s regulations on hazardous restrictions allows children over age 12 to perform work which puts them in contact with tobacco plants and leaves.”

The letter went on to point out that former labor secretary Hilda Solis proposed a rule to update the list of hazardous occupations including working in the production of tobacco, a proposal that would later be withdrawn.

A variety of organizations are weighing in on the issue, including the National Consumers League, which offered its support in a press release dated Sept. 17. 

“They can’t legally purchase cigarettes, but we permit these children to work in tobacco fields and suffer acute nicotine poisoning,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of NCL and co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which NCL helped found 25 years ago. “We urge Congress to take immediate action to protect America’s most vulnerable workers – children in tobacco fields.”

Cicilline has also introduced House Bill 5327 with the intent “to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to prohibit work by children in tobacco-related agriculture as particularly hazardous oppressive child labor.”

The Council for Burley Tobacco (CBT) offered its support to a mandatory age of those hired to work in tobacco.

Last July, the Council issued a statement that read, “We do not condone the hiring of anyone under the age of 16 for work in tobacco anywhere in the world.”

Rod Kuegel, president of the CBT Board of Directors, said he didn’t have a problem with passing legislation that would stop those under 16 years of age from being employed in tobacco.

“But we are specific when we draw the line to not legislate what a farmer does with his family,” he said. “Legislation should be for employing people on the farm who are over 16 years old, and I endorse that. I don’t endorse Congress trying to tell us what to do with our families.”

Kuegel said that part of the discussion within the Council on this issue centered on the fact it really didn’t affect burley because most young people weren’t willing to work in tobacco anyway, and the incidence of children working in tobacco production is low in this country.

The legislative letter also mentioned support of companies like Phillip Morris International, which welcomed the strengthening of the U.S. regulatory framework regarding children working in tobacco.

Cicilline’s bill, which was introduced on July 31, has been referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is co-sponsored by eight other legislators, none of whom hail from the major tobacco-producing states.