Tobacco Industry's Issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Tobacco Industry's Issues - Essay Example Not only can you find people facing several health issues but other problems are also associated with tobacco cultivation. For instance, child labor is the only small problem associated with it.      When you will delve more into the details pertaining to the tobacco industry, you will find that the majority of tobacco workers are migrant workers.   Although often gone unnoticed by consumers, those engaged in the growth and preparation of tobacco and tobacco-related products are often exposed to many health hazards.   Because tobacco is a global industry, tobacco workers all over the world are exposed to such risks.Tobacco products: cigarettes, cigars, snuff, and chewing tobacco, are well known to pose a serious environmental health threat both to consumers themselves and, in the case of secondhand smoke, to the people around them.   Today, vigorous tobacco control activity around the world focuses on curbing tobacco use and, thus, its health effects on consumers.   But the tobacco workers who labor to bring the plant to market face another range of environmental health risks.   Also, most of the labor laws don’t really affect these people because most of them l ive in developing countries where they work on their own family farms. However, it is interesting to note that in the United States, the federal government historically has encouraged tobacco agriculture.   The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tobacco price support program sets an annual national quota restricting the amount of tobacco that can be grown to that estimated to meet annual domestic and export demand.   For those farmers who hold quota allotments, this policy and an accompanying federal loan program keep market prices artificially high.   Quotas can be leased and traded, and in recent years this has resulted in the concentration of quota allotments in fewer hands, creating some large-scale nonfamily farming operations.