Each year, during dry season, Huichol families from the Sierra Madre in Nayarit, leave their communities to look for jobs as day laborers growing, cutting and harvesting tobacco on the northern coast of Nayarit state, in México. Most of the workers travel with their entire families: pregnant women, kids and new born child included.
Working at the tobacco fields means that they have to be in constant and permanent contact with chemical pesticides and fertilizers, a risk that affects all the workers but specially the native Mexican people because, as they don't have a place to live, they end up living at the tobacco fields where they don't have the proper place to wash their clothes and themselves, so they stay with the chemicals their whole stay and the whole season, at the same time, they don't have clean drinking water so they drink from the irrigation canal that comes from the Santiago River, one of the most contaminated rivers in México.
Most of the tobacco production in Nayarit goes to companies like British American Tobacco and Philip Morris international, that despite their billions of dollars in earnings they haven't taken responsibility for these workers, that even when they work from 20 to 22 hours per day, very often don't have enough money to buy food for the rest of the week. Philip Morris International says that “has developed a comprehensive agricultural labor practice program to progressively eliminate child labor.” and that “includes the following provisions: No person below 18 is involved in any time of hazardous work.” Despite all that, the tobacco producers that sell Tobacco to Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, still use child labor. This is the real cost of cigarette.
