Tobacco Discourse Given During Earth Day Celebration

Source from:  Lindsey Halsey 5/10/07 05/15/2007

A presentation was held April 19 in honor of Earth Day that corresponded with the events that were taking place just outside the library. In room L-111, a man by the name of Marty Otanez was preparing to give an informative lecture to the audience about tobacco and how it affected the communities who grew it. Otanez is a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UC San Francisco. The presentation was titled "Land and Labor in Global Tobacco Economy," and Otanez began by introducing the fact that even though he would be discussing the tobacco industry specifically, this presentation really provided "鈥 model to understand other companies' elements of humanity embedded in their commodities." Otanez focused on a little sub-Saharan country named Malawi. It has a population of 13 million people, with 85 percent of that living in rural areas. The tobacco leaf companies, Universal Leaf and Alliance One International, employ about two million of Malawi's population. Otanez illustrated points such as how about 65 percent of the country's foreign earnings come the exportation of tobacco leaves, a lot of which were found in Camel and Marlboro cigarettes. Besides these basic "fun facts," Otanez pointed out how the people of this country had been exploited through the years. Many of the families who worked for the tobacco leaf companies lived on hectares, along with the plants they harvested. These families had a landlord who gave them any food, fertilizer or pesticides they may have needed. He then collected the leaves from the workers at the end of each harvest. "After the landlord sells the crops, he would often inflate the prices of food and pesticides," Otanez said, "So, the people would have to pay more for the things that were promised to them. This would lead to a lifelong debt that could never be paid off." In a video Ortanez showed the audience, one woman was reported to have earned only $80 in three years, and all earnings from a few harvests had gone entirely to the landlord to pay for her debts. Malawi is a population that suffered from chronic poverty and sickness. The estimated average age of death in this country was 39. This was mostly due to the lack of clean drinking water. Often on the hectares of land that families lived on, they would dig wells in order to get to water. Most times, pesticides would run off from the tobacco plants and into the wells. The people who ingested the contaminated water could contract such diseases as malaria, tuberculosis, bronchitis, pneumonia, cholera or schistosomiasis. Child labor was also a problem in Malawi. Otanez said that families would often be encouraged to keep their children from going to school in order to work in the tobacco fields and to regard leaf picking as a "household chore." After the presentation, the people left the building with many mixed feelings about what they had just witnessed. "[The presentation] was really interesting. I never knew cigarettes were made in Africa," said nursing major Gennifer DePaoli, 23. "It's really sad and surprising." Otanez asked everyone hypothetical questions to take with him or her, such as what would it take for you to understand the humanity in the products we consume? "There is more people than the U.S. that consume their products," said nursing major Maria Paulo, 20. "If the U.S. boycotts it, [Malawi] is going to market to Africa." It was reported that Malawi's own president had encouraged his people to smoke more in order to increase the economy. Otanez had also posed a question asking if one possible solution to ending the exploitation of Malawi's people simply would be if we consumed less tobacco products. The audience remained silent. The first step in creating change is stimulating thoughts about what is happening and what could be done to end it. Enditem