Human Rights Watch has now invaded Kentucky and declared war on tobacco growers in general, by recommending-based on this report- that the federal government step in and prohibit the use of child and teenage labor in the tobacco growing industry-even on family farms, where growers children have traditionally worked as a way of learning the business many of them will eventually inherit.
Granted, there have been instances of such things as "green tobacco sickness" and injuries in the course of working tobacco (the latter of which is true about just about any work involving teens, children, or adults) and there are also legitimate concerns about the use of undocumented immigrant labor, many of whom in some cases are (allegedly) children.
But let's be plain. The main goal here is probably to dismantle the current tobacco industry, which by the time twenty or thirty years have passed will probably no longer exist as we know it today. What remains will probably be managed and controlled by giant agribusiness, which might well be the fate of all American and most international farming.
If so, it would not be the first time this has happened regarding tobacco in Kentucky. It might however result in the same kind of chaos as The Black Patch Wars.
Of course, this ended only in part due to the violence, but also due to the fact that the ATC was found to be a monopoly, and thus illegal according to the Sherman Antitrust Act. The only way now to establish a monopoly, legally, would be to first dismantle the family farm system by making it wholly unprofitable and unpractical.
A major step in accomplishing this objective might well be to forbid children of farmers from participation, and thereby from learning their families traditional craft which in some cases has been passed down through generations.
