Still smoking? Your ciggies may have poisoned Indonesian kids

Jakarta

WHEN he was nine years old, Samsul Hadi began working the tobacco fields in his village in central Indonesia. It wasn't long before his back ached, his hands turned black from the sticky residue of tobacco leaf, and he began vomiting blood - a consequence of nicotine poisoning that caused his parents to rush him to a doctor who told him to quit.

"I was coughing for two days, then vomiting blood the next day," said Mr Samsul, now 18, shy and pock-cheeked, as he perched on the edge of a field and contemplated his family's future tobacco crops. "Children aren't strong enough. I don't want them to experience this." Yet all over Indonesia, they are. Children as young as eight are working in Indonesia's tobacco farms where they are exposed to potentially brain-damaging and illness-causing effects from nicotine poisoning and toxic pesticides, as well as dangerous physical labour, according to a 119-page report by Human Rights Watch released on Wednesday. Much of the tobacco is sold to multinational producers of cigarettes smoked in the US, Europe, Japan, China and elsewhere, it said.