Common Questions on Tobacco

No, in tobacco growing children have to work under exploitative conditions. Child labour in tobacco growing is considered as one of the worst forms of child labour, according to the ILO Convention 182.

Children have various reasons for working and not all work performed by children is considered child labour. Work of children can be useful for them to be able to attend school, fulfill individual wishes and acquire certain skills.

However, child labour is work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally harmful to children, that interferes with their education or that is performed under exploitative conditions. This is the case with tobacco growing.

While working on tobacco fields, children are exposed to dangerous chemicals and nicotine. They can also get injured due to the use of sharp tools. Beside the health risks, the children often have a hard time attending school or studying properly, especially during harvest time.

Tobacco companies pay low prices for the leaf tobacco. Families who grow tobacco often have problems earning a living from tobacc growing. Therefore, they can’t pay adult workers and thus have to rely on every family member, even their children.

To enable families to escape the circle of poverty and exploitation, farmers need a living income. This includes legally enforceable written contracts, as well as appropriate, adequate payment.

In the long term, the main solution is to switch from tobacco cultivation to alternative sources of income.

Click here to read more about child labour in tobacco growing

Tobacco cultivation involves the heavy use of chemicals to protect the plants from pests, fungi and weeds. Sometimes those pesticides can be so toxic that already 0.01 grams can kill a human. Some are carcinogenic, some can damage the genome. In addition to humans, they can also poison the air, water and soil.

For example, chloropicrin, a chemical banned in the EU since 2011, is used to disinfect the soil. It is poisonous to the respiratory system and can lead to death by suffocation.

Another example is a pesticide called 1,3-dichloropropene which is not only harmful to the respiratory system, but also to the skin, eyes and reproductive organs. Its use is banned in the EU since 2008.

Besides those two, the herbicide glyphosate is also used in tobacco cultivation. According to the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) of the WHO (World Health Organization), glyphosate is classified as probably carcinogenic to humans and can lead to miscarriages and fetal anomalies. A ban has been the subject of controversial debate in the EU for years.

All of these pesticides Leach from the fields into the soil and nearby watercourses. They can also get into the groundwater and jeopardise drinking water.

Read more about the environmental impact of tobacco cultivation in Bangladesh.

The tobacco plant extracts important nutrients from the soil, such as phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium, more than other crops. This is why tobacco monocropping needs chemical fertilizers to ensure that the plants are provided with sufficient nutrients. In addition, agrochemicals such as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are used – which also harms the biodiversity of the soil.

As a result of the continuous tobacco cultivation, the soil becomes hard, dries up quickly or does not drain easily. Therefore, the soil loses its quality and fertility.

Already after two to three years the soil is depleted. Thus, in countries like Tanzania, more and more forests are being cleared to open up more areas for tobacco cultivation.

Read more about the environmental risks of tobacco cultivation in Tanzania and Bangladesh.

Already tobacco cultivation harms waterbodies. Different pesticides and chemical fertilizers used in the fields are leaching into nearby watercourses and end up in the groundwater. Contaminated ground water is a danger to the drinking water of all people in tobacco growing areas.

Additionally, cigarette manufacturing produces contaminated waste water, containing nicotine, heavy metals and other poisonous substances, which could enter rivers and end up in the oceans.

A laboratory study tested the effect of contaminated water on fish. The study showed that half of the fish died at a concentration of one used cigarette butt in one litre of water. Furthermore, cigarette filters are made of plastic and are not biodegradable, but break down into microplastic. Cigarette filters that end up in the sea can be mistaken for food by animals such as birds, fish and marine mammals. The microplastic particles that are consumed by these animals eventually find their way back to us humans via the food chain.
Lastly, all water eventually ends up in the ocean. That’s why it is important to ensure cigarette butts don’t get into waterbodies and destroy the environment!

Click here to read more: SDG Factsheet No. 5 Tobacco | Water | Oceans.

Yes, the tobacco industry is harmful to our climate and its ecological footprint is very large. Considering the various steps from field to consumption, the global cigarette industry produces a total of 83.6 million tons of CO2 equivalents annually!

Some might guess that tobacco use makes up the largest share of carbon dioxide emissions in the supply chain. However, it accounts only for a very small part of it. Most climate damage is caused by tobacco curing (53.5%) and cultivation (24.9%) and by cigarette production (18.8%). The rest of the total 83.6 million tons CO2 equivalents is caused by further processing (1.3%), consumption and disposal (1.0%) as well as the distribution (0.5%). In comparison, Austria annually emits as similar amount of greenhouse gases, specifically 79 million tons of CO2 equivalents.

Another issue is the large scale of deforestation associated with tobacco cultivation, putting the livelihoods of plants, animals and humans in danger. The loss of forests does not only affect livelihoods, but is also significant for global climate change, as the natural forest is no longer available for CO2 storage and burning firewood for tobacco curing results in more CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

Click here to find more information on the environment and tobacco.

Cigarette production requires a lot of wood. For cultivation and curing of tobacco alone, at least 200,000 hectares of tropical forests are cut down every year. Additionally, 2.4 million tons of paper and cardboard are needed for the production of cigarette paper and packaging.

A process that requires a large amount of wood is the curing of Virginia tobacco. It is the main ingredient of the popular American blend cigarettes and is cured using the so called flue curing method. The green leaves are hung in sheds over hot pipes. In order to constantly ensure that the air in the sheds has the right temperature, the pipes are regularly heated using log fire. Every year, this process requires around 8 million tons of fire wood world wide, most of which is taken from nearby forests.

Besides that, cigarettes themselves can cause forest loss, precisely when they are carelessly discarded in forests while smouldering. This can ignite forest fires. For example, in the summer of 2009, a forest fire of 2,000 hectares was caused by a cigarette butt in the Russian republic Buryatia.

Click here to read more: SDG Factsheet No. 6 Tobacco | Forests.

Tobacco does not only harm its consumers, but also the farmers who grow it. The plant contains the poison nicotine adhering to the fresh green leaves which can be absorbed through the skin particularly in wet conditions (morning dew, rain, sweat). This may result in an acute nicotine poisoning known as Green Tobacco Sickness. It leads to dizziness, nausea, vomiting, headaches, and weak muscles.

This is particularly dangerous for the numerous children working in tobacco fields all over the world. Without protection and under wet conditions, workers can get into contact with an amount of 54 mg nicotine per day – the amount of nicotine contained in 50 cigarettes. Even if they don’t smoke themselves, after the harvesting season, the workers’ blood can contain as much nicotine as the blood of heavy smokers.

Furthermore, nicotine weakens the immune system and can boost cancer as well as metabolic diseases such as diabetes.

Very often, farmers do not have enough resources to buy protection gear. Additionally, they have to calculate the risk of nicotine poisoning against the risk of overheating. Particularly the children on the fields have an increased risk of suffering from life threatening heat strokes and dehydration.

No, there is no such thing as fairtrade tobacco.

The label fairtrade indicates fair production conditions: health and safety measures for workers, no child labour, fair wages and prices. This is well known from coffee, chocolate or tea. But for tobacco there ain’t no fairtrade standards nor a fairtrade label.

Neither the cultivation nor the use of tobacco are consistent with the principles of fairtrade due to its negative social, ecological and health impact. Members of the fairtrade network, therefore, do not at all consider tobacco in their product lines.

Tobacco harms the health of its consumers. Cigarettes kill half of their consumers and cause longtime illnesses for many users.

Tobacco also harms the producers. Tobacco growing destroys the environment due to deforestation and the heavy use of pesticides. Futhermore, tobacco growing has a negative impact on the food security of the farmers and the whole population in tobacco growing areas.

Read more about how tobacco threatens a sustainable development

Cigarette butts are poisonous. They contain a mixture of over 7,000 different toxic substances like heavy metals and nicotine. After smoking, the cigarette butts are often discarded in the environment, where these poisons are washed away by the rain and then contaminate the soil and waterbodies.

A study from Berlin shows that the nicotine in cigarette butts has the potential to contaminate 1,000 liters of water, harming organisms like water fleas. The study also found out, that the amount of water-soluble nicotine in one cigarette butt is about 14 times more than the EU-limit of 0.5 milligrams per gram for hazardous tobacco waste.

On top of that, cigarette filters are made of plastic. Filters that end up in the oceans can be mistaken for food by animals such as fish, birds and marine mammals. Since the filters are not biodegradable, they break down to microplastic particles, which can then find their way back to us humans via the food chain.

Cigarette butts can also cause wildfires triggered by burning or smouldering cigarettes, that are carelessly littered in the forest. For instance, in 2017, a wildfire caused by a cigarette butt in France had run through 800 hectares of forest and in 2018, another wildfire, also caused by a cigarette butt consumed 600 hectares of forest in the USA.

So if you want to protect our environment, you should never carelessly throw away cigarette butts. Although it would be even better to not smoke at all.

Click here to read more about how tobacco is harmful to the environment.

Passive smoking is damaging to your health. In Germany, passive smoking is the cause of death of about 3,000 people annualy. Secondhand smoke contains the same substances as regular smoke, tough, depending on the environment in a different composition.

11.3% of non- smoking adults in Germany are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke. This number is the highest among young people between the age of 18 to 29, for men 26.8% and for women 19.8%.

Men mostly encounter tobacco smoke at work, in restaurants or among friends and acquaintances. Women are mostly exposed to passive smoking at home and among friends and acquaintances.

Passive smoking is especially dangerous for children, because they have a higher breathing frequency and a less effective detoxification system, which is why they need extra protection from passive smoking.

The protection of non-smokers is regulated differently in each state of Germany. Strict and consistent regulations would further protect people from the dangers of passive smoking. Banning advertisement would lead to less people smoking and especially prevent children and young people from smoking. Because unfortunately, we are still far away from a non-smoking world.

Click here to read more: SDG Factsheet No. 4 Tobacco Decent Work

Eight million people worldwide die each year due to the consumption of tobacco, about 1.2 million of these deaths resulted in passive smoking. Tobacco kills half of its users and harms many others with long lasting diseases when used as intended.

Tobacco smoke contains over 5,300 substances, including toxins like carbon monoxide or hydrocyanic acid. About 250 of those substances are poisonous and 90 are either carcinogenic or possibly carcinogenic. Smoking is responsible for over 80% of all cases of lung cancer. Tobacco also increases the possibility to get other cancer types such as laryngeal and esophageal cancer. It even increases the risk of cancer for organs with no direct contact to the smoke (e.g. leukemia, pancreatic and cervical cancer).

Additionally, the risk to develop cardiovascular diseases and strokes is twice as high for smokers compared to non smokers. With every cigarette, the risk to get diabetes also increases.

Smoking also causes chronic bronchitis and leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD destroys the pulmonary alveoli and the bronchial tubes become narrowed. The disease is incurable and eventually leads to death by asphyxiation.

For a few years now, less people of all age groups smoke in Germany. Especially children and young people are less interested in smoking cigarettes. In the late 1990s, about 30% of the 12 to 17 year olds were smokers, currently that number is around 10%.

Still: every forth adult smokes, specifically every third man and every fifth woman. Of the total 894,000 deaths in Germany in 2013, about 121,000 – 13.5% – were related to smoking. Over half of the people that died due to smoking had cancer.

In addition, many adults are still involuntarily exposed to tobacco smoke: 34% of non-smoking men and 22% of non-smoking women are confronted with tobacco smoke at least once a week. At their workplaces, non-smokers often have to breathe in smoke daily, especially at construction sites and in hospitality. Passive smoking is annually the cause of death of 3,000 people in Germany.

The protection of non-smokers is regulated differently in each state of Germany. Strict and consistent regulations would further protect people from the dangers of passive smoking. Banning advertisement would lead to less people smoking and especially prevent children and young people from starting to smoke. Because unfortunately, we are still far away from a non-smoking world.

Generally speaking, the purpose of every ad is to get people to buy the advertised product. That also applies to cigarettes. Though, the difference is that the consequences on someones health due to smoking are so grave, that half of the people who smoke cigarettes die.

Beside the banners and ads in cinemas, that are already prohibited in many countries, the tobacco industry uses numerous other methods. Cigarette companies sponsor sports and music events and use celebrities for advertising. They use the internet and social media to get new customers. Additionally, they engage in educational and social programs (Corporate Social Responsibility) to promote a positive image of themselves.

The tobacco industry claims, that the only aim of their ads is to convince smokers to switch to their brand. But their marketing targets especially young people who later become smokers. The internal documents of the tobacco industry as well as studies on the effect of tobacco ads prove that.

Since 2021, the tobacco ad ban is slowly being implemented in Germany. Cigarette ads on banners are banned since 2022, this also applies to tobacco heating systems since 2023 and e-cigarettes since 2024. Although, the law still allows ads outside of stores in addition to sponsoring and promotions.

Click here to read more about how the tobacco industry advertises on social media: