“(B) ADDITIONAL SPECIAL RULE.—Beginning 2 years after the date of enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a tobacco product manufacturer shall not use tobacco, including foreign grown tobacco, that contains a pesticide chemical residue that is at a level greater than is specified by any tolerance applicable under Federal law to domestically grown tobacco.“
Presumably if the tolerance was zero, like with totally banned DDT and many of the other pesticides you see in the data below, then the law would apply. Zero tolerance, right? No US manufacturer can use foreign-grown tobacco contaminated with DDT, and many of the other pesticide residues you see here like Carbendazim – totally banned in the EU. So what’s this data and why has FDA allowed this illegal and dangerous exposure to go on for years without a single move to intervene? I know for a fact that they know exactly what is happening, and I’ll leave it to you to decide why the FDA, CDC, EPA, FTC and every other government agency refuses to regulate the Tobacco Cartel’s products.
Who’s smoking those Swisher Sweets, and why do you suppose the diabetes, obesity and hypertension in those communities are so extreme?
Search “exposure” to any of the pesticides in that table along with keywords diabetes, obesity or hypertension and you’ll find out. And here’s one clue as to where that DDT is going and what it’s doing to smokers.
“Correlates of organochlorine pesticide plasma concentrations among reproductive-aged black women“
“… prospective cohort study of Black women aged 23–35 years from the Detroit, Michigan metropolitan area (enrolled 2010–2012), examined correlates of plasma concentrations of the following OCPs: dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,pʹ-DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), oxychlordane, and trans-nonachlor.”
“Current smoking was associated with 10–19% higher plasma concentrations of all four OCPs, and was highest for current smokers of ≥10 cigarettes/day (% differences ranged from 22 to 29%).”
This group of young Black women smokers is exactly the target market for the Swisher Sweets you see in the data above.
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In case this situation has your attention you may be interested in looking into it further. Here are some of my recent posts linking the data to published research on the results of chronic exposure to these pesticides.
This post offers hard evidence and historic documentation of the conspiratorial role of Federal agencies in concealing the health threat to smokers created by unregulated pesticide exposure
This post offers a look at the historical origins of today’s breast cancer, diabetes and obesity epidemics in the trans-generational impact of DDT and Organochlorine pesticide contaminants in cigarettes 1950-1972, and the current state of DDT in tobacco products in 2021
This post links new hard data on pesticide contaminants in cigarettes with the elevated health risks this creates for Diabetic smokers, and the simple strategy that individual smokers can use to eliminate the threat.
A radical “quit smoking” plan that will probably offend a lot of non-smokers but that could help a lot of Diabetic smokers quit hurting themselves without having to quit.
This post links hard data on DDT in Swisher Sweets brand of little cigars, smoked by millions of young women, with peer-reviewed published research on pre-natal genetic damage to the baby
This post links hard data on hidden fungicides in tobacco brands popular in marginalized communities with peer-reviewed published research that demonstrates that exposure to these same fungicides is strongly associated with testicular cancer
Any exposure to several of the pesticides shown to contaminate tobacco products are proven to have greater impact on babies with Latinx, African American, American Indian and Pacific Island genetics.
Could the unexplained link between smoking and suicide be explained by the known link between pesticide exposure and suicide, once you become aware of the concealed pesticide contamination in cigarettes?
There’s nothing spontaneous if a young smoker loses her baby because the insecticides and fungicides in her cigarettes have interrupted fetal development creating ‘non-viable offspring’ doing to her what they are designed to do to bugs.
When a pregnant woman is exposed to DDT during a critical time window in her female baby’s development that female baby will have 4X greater risk of developing breast cancer if she is Black or Brown-skinned.
Once you know about the hidden pesticides communities can use existing toxic substances laws to ban the most dangerous brands and force compliance by the rest.
Long-forgotten, or maybe long-ignored science says yes it can, safely and probably very successfully.
Doctors 150 years ago knew Coca Leaf tea, or infusion as they called it, as a well-established and solidly proven treatment, and in some cases a cure, for every one of the symptoms of diseases like pneumonia and other inflammatory diseases and conditions that are these days also the primary symptoms of Long Haul COVID. I’ll show you the rather extensive and well-documented evidence in this post. So since this has been known for centuries, why aren’t we treating Long Haul COVID worldwide with Coca Leaf tea? Why aren’t we at least trying it? Or even talking about it?
Here’s what the CDC has to say about Long COVID symptoms:
“Long COVID is a range of symptoms that can last weeks or months after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 or can appear weeks after infection. Long COVID can happen to anyone who has had COVID-19, even if the illness was mild, or they had no symptoms.
“People with long COVID report experiencing different combinations of the following symptoms:
Tiredness or fatigue
Difficulty thinking or concentrating (aka “brain fog”)
Headache
Loss of smell or taste
Dizziness on standing
Fast-beating or pounding heart (aka heart palpitations)
Chest pain
Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Cough
Joint or muscle pain
Depression or anxiety
Fever
Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental activities
Every single one of these CDC-designated symptoms of “Long Haul COVID” are symptoms that thousands of doctors in the US and Europe treated successfully every day in the 1800s with Coca Leaf tonics and teas. No Big Pharma needed – just the leaves of the Coca plant and a teapot. And notice I said “treated successfully”, not “healed” – although there are plenty of medical records of that too. Bottom line – generations of people suffering from diseases and “conditions” exactly the same as Long COVID were treated successfully with Coca Tea.
Somehow all that information has disappeared. Where has it ever been taught in schools. Where does it exist anywhere in our social media or our entertainment? The slate has been wiped clean – almost.
That historical record is real, and it exists, and once you even glance at it there can be no argument – if Long COVID victims had access to Coca Tea, many would find relief and maybe even regain their health. And so cheap, easy, and natural. The following post contains dozens of links to hard data that support the possibility of Coca Leaf tea as a natural, safe treatment for Long Haul COVID
So really – what possible harm could there be in allowing people suffering from Long Haul COVID to buy Coca Leaves a pound at a time over the internet so that they can make themselves a few cups of Coca tea a day and maybe get better? Let’s get real. Nobody could put together a Cocaine production operation one pound of leaves at a time. Even with free shipping from Amazon Prime – which is where you can bet one-pound bags of fresh organic Coca leaves would show up immediately. Coca Leaf for tea will be way too expensive to buy by the ton, which is what would be needed for even a small cocaine operation. So there’s really zero issue about legalizing small amounts for making this healing medicine.
Two weeks after regulations were lifted on fresh Coca Leaf it would be available from indigenous sellers on the internet and Long COVID sufferers worldwide could begin treating themselves and we could all find out if those doctors in the 1800s were just primitive fools without access to modern medical knowledge – or maybe we’re the fools? If you’re curious to find out, here’s your access to virtually the entire body of long-lost Coca Leaf medical knowledge and a whole lot more.
5 long-lost books, over 800+ Digital pages, with hyperlinks to 300 years of amazing history!
I believe published science clearly shows that there’s a very strong and maybe an undeniable connection between secret US military and ‘public health’ programs to spray southern Black communities with DDT throughout the 1940s & 1950s and today’s epidemics of obesity, breast cancer and other DDT-related diseases in those same southern communities and within the Black diaspora. This illegal, totally concealed, and undeniably genocidal DDT exposure continues today through DDT-contaminated Little Cigars marketed directly to young Black men, women – and children.
If what I will document in this post is true, then this is an atrocity that calls out not just for historical justice and accountability but for international trials of the corporate and official criminals behind these ongoing crimes against Black humanity.
Documenting an atrocity with images brings home the human suffering in ways that words cannot. Since this is the story of an atrocity against Black people in America that spans so much time and so many places, and that has so many victims both long dead and alive today, I have been struggling as a writer to find a way to tell the story with images that convey the scope of the tragedy, and I will show you what I hope are images that make you say WTF!
But let’s begin the story by showing you the connection between DDT exposure of a mother & obesity in her children:
“Maternal o,p’-DDT was positively associated with a 26% (95% CI: 6–49) to 31% (95% CI: 6–62) higher risk of overweight and the same magnitude of additional risk for obesity…”
“These data indicate maternal DDT exposure is significantly associated with increased obesity risk among middle-aged women independent of the obesity definition, confounding, and obesity risk factors.“
Quite simply and tragically, the genetic damage that DDT does reaches across generations to cause obesity, diabetes and breast cancer in children and grandchildren. I’m thinking that may be the connection between Black tobacco and cotton workers being sprayed with DDT in the fields, and in their homes and churches, and in the cigarettes they smoked, and today’s obesity pandemic in the Black community. Read on and then tell me what you think.
Here’s more science that shows that the specific kinds of genetic damage caused by DDT and leading to Obesity and Diabetes crosses more than just one generation in a family:
“Observations indicate ancestral exposure to DDT can promote obesity and associated disease transgenerationally. The etiology of disease such as obesity may be in part due to environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.”
So now let’s look at a series of images that demonstrate graphically how the lifelong exposure of Black communities to DDT may be showing up in today’s diabetes, obesity and cancer epidemics. Please just let these images and the stories they tell sink in.
Let’s start with this faded old map by the US Army showing the range of Malaria 1934-35.
DDT was invented in the 1930s and quickly became the #1 solution for controlling Malaria epidemics in the 1940s, as it remains today in 2021. However, very early in its use it was discovered to be so dangerous to humans that it was banned for any other use but Malaria control in 1972 Even in 2021 there’s nothing like it for killing just about everything, and it is still allowed to fight the worst Malaria epidemics but only under strict UN/WHO limitations, and it is not allowed for any other use. Certainly not for spraying anything people are going to ingest.
In the period 1940-1945 the US Army was in charge of combating Malaria in the WWII South Pacific, and they already knew that DDT was dangerous, so they wanted to try it out on mass populations. Their solution was a secret program to blanket entire cities with DDT fog and then monitor the hospitals. In the huge Black neighborhoods of St. Louis the Army set up rooftop generators that blanketed these communities day and night for weeks with a DDT fog, hardly a secret to people living there but they were powerless Black people and it was wartime. The newspapers of the time hardly mention these vast rooftop DDT foggers.
The Army had doctors on its payroll to track reports of sickness and death, which continued for several years, but this entire program, which without doubt sickened and killed far more Black people than the Tuskegee experiments, and whose trans-generational impact is still being felt, has never been investigated or reported and the records were probably sanitized long ago.
The experiments weren’t confined to big cities. “Well before DDT drifted over (White) homes, however, it was sprayed inside the homes of black families in rural Georgia and Arkansas. The spraying was part of a set of federal experiments (for which little record seems to exist) upon which broader use of DDT in the war and afterward was based. An article on the Arkansas experiments describes the “field site” as a place where “ninety-five percent of the houses are of tenant or sharecropper type, shotgun-construction, newspaper lined, and inhabited by Negroes making only a marginal living.” (“DDT May Control Malaria” Science NewsLetter, Dec. 30, 1944 p. 418 – quoted in “DDT Disbelievers: Health and the New Economic Poisons in Georgia after World War II”)
As the quote from Science Newsletter shows, DDT was heavily sprayed in Black homes and communities before it was used in White communities. The science at the time is full of questions about the hazards of DDT, but the bottom line is that DDT was needed for WWII against the Japanese in the Pacific and experiments on human populations were AOK, especially if those populations were not White, just like the Japanese enemy.
So after WWII came the period of heaviest DDT use on Cotton and Tobacco crops, and in spraying for Malaria which ceased in the early 1970s – and lo and behold most of the Tobacco, Cotton and Malaria were all concentrated in heavily Black communities. During that same period it wasn’t just Black communities exposed to DDT, not are the transgenerational effects of DDT exposure limited to Black people today. Here’s one example of how pervasive DDT was in the environment – DDT infused Disney character wallpaper. Maybe this used in your Mother’s or even Grandmother’s nursery when she was a baby – to protect her, of course. But are you struggling with any of the diseases that we now know are caused by DDT exposure? I sincerely hope not, but if you are then maybe looking at a possible genetic component of your issues might be helpful.
Now let’s look at 1971, 30 years after heavy DDT spraying began first against Malaria and then on Cotton and Tobacco crops – and therefore on Black people. So where were DDT concentrations in the air heaviest? Check it out.
Like I said, on Black people in Cotton and Tobacco fields – and in Black houses, churches, schools and playgrounds.
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Ok. Now let’s look at a couple of more maps. We know for sure that exposure to DDT causes Breast Cancer and Obesity in the children and grandchildren of people who are exposed.
Check out the map of childhood obesity in 2021. Could these be the grandchildren of people exposed to DDT in the 1940s-1970s? There’s more.
Now how about this pattern of Black women having the more aggressive kinds of Breast Cancer associated with both lifetime and genetic exposure to DDT damage. I suppose I could throw in a map showing the Black Diaspora compared with these Breast Cancer data but I’m guessing that isn’t necessary.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN BREAST CANCER RATES
So far I’ve only been showing you data on environmental exposure to DDT and suggesting that the correlations between exposure of Black communities in the South and disease data are pretty striking. But there’s another side to the DDT exposure story that is far more sinister. Let me show you.
In the period 1940-1970 cigarettes were heavily contaminated with DDT. That means that people who were smoking AND who were being environmentally exposed were inhaling DDT 24/7/365. This table is from 1971.
Well, you might say, since DDT was banned worldwide in 1972 and the heavy spraying of Black communities stopped then, even if the grandchildren of those people are suffering from Obesity and Breast Cancer caused by that DDT, what can be done about it?
Well, for one thing the exposure of Black people to inhaling DDT 24/7 hasn’t stopped. Check out the DDT in among all the other genetically-damaging pesticides in Swisher Sweets – a brand heavily marketed to young Black people in their reproductive years.
Notice that DDT? That is 700X higher than any residual DDT in any food product or water sample from anywhere in the US today. In the tobacco product of choice among young African-Americans. A tobacco product that is designed and marketed specially for young Black smokers.
But it doesn’t stop there. Rather than reciting all the catastrophic consequences of this man-made DDT obesity epidemic let me leave you now with a look at all those consequences in one image and ask you – how many of these diseases are inflicted disproportionately upon Black and Brown people?
Finally, here are links to several posts with the peer-reviewed science behind every statement I’ve just made in this post – and much more.
Now that Cannabis will soon be legal on the Federal level, compelling new opportunities will emerge for Cannabis businesses that are currently growing or buying Flower for wholesale or retail sale or for creating Cannabis products. Based on some original research I’ve been doing on IRS farm laws, it looks to me like just about any kind of Cannabis business involved in growing Cannabis Flower, from family farms to major acreage producers, would be able to benefit in some remarkable new ways from a set of obscure but economically important IRS regulations on tenant/sharecropper farming. That’s right – tenant farming and sharecropping laws, but used in new ways to empower and free people rather than exploit and enslave them.
Please let me tell you about these obscure but completely clear IRS provisions and how I see them working for the Cannabis community and, in a potentially wonderful new way, for homeless people and families now forced to live in poverty on the ragged edges of wealth and property.
The incredibly high economic yield of Cannabis per acre has attracted large numbers of both independent and corporate growers to this flourishing business sector, and although I completely recognize the need for mass growing under lights I also remain dedicated to the vision of Cannabis that many of us shared when I wrote the first Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana in 1969.
I think that in the very understandable rush for scale and profit the vast potential of Cannabis to provide a sustainable living for communities of people has been overlooked. I hope that now, fifty years into the Cannabis revolution, the time may have come and events may have evolved enough to allow us reach back to our roots and rediscover the hopeful, creative, altruistic side of Cannabis. Ironically, we can do this by taking an obscure but completely viable set of Federal tax laws and applying them in new ways to the potential of Cannabis for community-building. CBD growers will be able to implement the strategies I will describe immediately; THC growers will have to wait for Federal legalization.
The tax laws I’m talking about can be applied as written, with no modifications or interpretations needed, and could allow Cannabis businesses of any size – you would not have to be big corporate Cannabis – to set up and run small communities of Tenant Farmer/Sharecroppers to grow premium sun-grown Cannabis for their wholesale/retail operations or for Cannabis product production in a way that provides a decent income and a community of livable housing for the people doing the growing, and lower costs, significant tax breaks, valuable economic incentives, and an opportunity to be part of a truly sustainable solution to homelessness for the Cannabis business community.
But come on – Tenant Sharecroppers! Everybody knows that sharecroppers and tenant farmers are poor, ignorant people living in rural squalor exploited by ruthless landowners who work them like slaves – right? That’s how it has been for generations – right?
Here’s the twist.
Well, in a remarkable twist of fate, the same special IRS regulations that incentivize landowners across the American South to virtually enslave sharecroppers and tenant farmers can be used to benefit thousands of homeless people, maybe tens of thousands, by creating sustainable, productive communities centered around small scale, high-value organic Cannabis farming. This will have to wait for Federal Cannabis legalization, since the plan depends on applying standard but obscure IRS farm expense deductions to the Cannabis operations in innovative new ways, but legalization is coming very soon and there’s no reason not to be ready to go when this model becomes legally viable.
And OK, I know that the history around this part of American life is so bad that it is counter-intuitive and counter-historical to imagine that the Tenant Farming/Sharecropper model could be used in new, positive ways – but that is exactly what I think can be done in the areas of affordable urban and rural housing.
In fact, the terrible reputation of this area of American life is probably why nobody seems to have looked closely at the tax laws that support it to see if there was another way to use them.
I think there is, and here’s my proposal.
First – what if it were possible to build a sustainable, fully-accessible housing community where the residents paid no rent, had good-paying jobs appropriate for their capabilities, and received utilities, insurance, day care, and other basic living needs at little or no cost? What if the residents of this community paid no Federal income tax on the rent and other benefits provided to them, and if the crop-shares they received were also not taxable? Further, what if each tenant/sharecropper was also empowered to have their own garden plot where they are licensed to grow Cannabis plants for medical patients to generate their own cash income? Which of course would be taxed.
This is all possible.
What if it were also possible for the developer of this self-operating, self-sustaining community to produce Cannabis flower for their retail/wholesale/product production operations at sustainably low cost with the added benefit of large tax deductions against their other business income as well as personal income well above anything they are currently experiencing.
It is possible.
In fact, I think that when all the numbers are run, a Cannabis retailer or other flower-based Cannabis business who invested in developing a tenant/sharecropper community of growers could produce organic premium Cannabis for their business at near net zero cost while building and supporting communities that will give homeless families stability, safety and a secure future. The economic yield per acre of Cannabis flower is so high that when that income stream is re-purposed from generating upstream and downstream profit margins to (1) providing low-cost Cannabis to the owner and (2) financing a sustainable community of growers, then a community of 20-30 families could easily be supported by working 3-5 acres. I think that these kinds of communities could be designed with full transitional services provided by existing non-profit and public agencies serving homeless people that could provide support and assistance in integrating homeless families into becoming Cannabis growers including financial support, counseling, and most importantly training for adults. I’m confident that this Cannabis community approach would attract the support of numerous non-profits that would help make the community an economically and socially sustainable enterprise.
I see no reason why there couldn’t be enough such operations in every state to provide homes and work for everyone needing them growing high-quality sun-grown Cannabis flower for the market, which is plenty big enough to guarantee sales for any amount that any number of these communities could grow. Even if every homeless person in America were given a home and a job growing Cannabis flower for the rest of us, there would still be a need for a huge amount of commercial production. The demand is that big, and of course it is growing.
Furthermore, if the flower grown by these communities were being retailed it could bring premium prices, competing effectively with light-grown Cannabis, and because of the lower cost structure of these Tenant/Sharecropper community operations it would be higher margin. Whether the flower was used internally or was sold, costs would be low and controllable because in outdoor growing operations labor replaces technology and energy and the cost of labor in these tenant/sharecrop communities would be 100% sustainable and predictable, replacing the high and unpredictable costs of technology and energy in commercial operations. Its the incredibly high economic yield of Cannabis per acre that has attracted both independent and corporate growers to this space, and although I completely recognize the need for mass growing under lights I also remain dedicated to the vision I had of Cannabis when I wrote Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana in 1969. I think that in the rush for scale and profit the vast potential of Cannabis to provide a sustainable living for communities of people has been overlooked.
The Relevant IRS Provisions
The Tenant Farming & Sharecropping laws define a relationship between employer and employee that is unique – under these laws, the landowner is able to deduct the fair market value of the housing, utilities, insurance and other benefits they provide to a tenant farmer/sharecropper.
The key here is that the landowner (the Cannabis business owner/landowner) can deduct the FAIR MARKET VALUE of the housing and benefits they provide to their tenants, not their actual cost in providing them. So if the 3/2 modular home the landowner supplies the tenant costs the landowner $350/month but the fair market value of a 3/2 home in the area is $2000/month, then that’s the landowner’s deduction. Same with vehicles, tools and other benefits – the fair market value of what the landowner provides the tenant/sharecropper.
But there’s the kicker. That tenant/sharecropper doesn’t have to report the value of that free housing and their other benefits as income. All that really is free of tax liability. There is no other employer/employee relationship with this configuration under IRS law.
Under any other circumstances, if an employee is given free housing they owe tax as if it were salary or wages paid in cash, and the same is true of all other employer-provided benefits like meals, insurance, utilities, or transportation. Tenant Farmer/Sharecroppers are the only group exempt from owing income taxes on these employer-provided benefits.
“You can deduct the costs of maintaining houses and their furnishings for tenants or hired help as farm business expenses. These costs include repairs, utilities, insurance, and depreciation. The value of a dwelling you furnish to a tenant under the usual tenant-farmer arrangement isn’t taxable income to the tenant.”
“The cost of boarding farm labor is a deductible labor cost. Other deductible costs you incur for farm labor include health insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, and other benefits.”
There are a number of related provisions, easily browsed in Pub. 225. All are equally clear. So after careful reading of the entire set of tax provisions affecting this relationship here are what I believe are the achievable benefits of this model.
For Community Residents
Affordable (or free) long-term quality housing
Affordable (or free) utilities, insurance, adult/child day care, other benefits
Community involvement in oversight of housing, benefits & employment
For The Cannabis Retailer
Sustainable low-cost organic Cannabis flower production
Dependable highly-motivated workforce
Farm management can be self-sustaining
New business/personal tax benefits and tax-advantaged revenue streams
New kinds of business tax credits potentially available (example: Work Opportunity Tax Credit; Farm Fuel Tax Credit).
For The Overall Community
Replace homelessness with new high-quality affordable housing with good, co-located jobs
Improve community-wide social & financial metrics
Reduce community-wide social & financial costs
Flexible model allows high or low-density, urban/suburban/rural development
In another approach, applying these Tenant Farming & Sharecropping tax provisions to indoor Cannabis production under lights employing a community of affordable housing residents as the tenants and sharecrop workforce might seem like a stretch, when you read the IRS language their applicability to indoor grows in towns and cities, though hardly contemplated by the IRS, seems pretty clear. That could enable this concept to be applied in urban infill Cannabis grows with tenant sharecroppers living in on-site modular housing that would be a cut above the toolshed “Home Depot” tiny houses that are currently being envisioned by so many well-meaning organizations as homeless housing. Let’s hope that Cannabis creativity leads to a sense of style in the tenant housing that springs from this concept.
As I said earlier, Tenant Farming & Sharecropping both have horrible connotations of poverty, racism, and exploitation. Both Tenant Farming & Sharecropping have been embedded in some form in agricultural tax & property ownership laws since the American colonies. As an exploitative agricultural model both have been around at least as far back as Medieval European peasants living in cottages and working on the King’s lands for a share.
This awful reputation for inhumanity is well-deserved, and is undoubtedly what has kept the positive potential of the Tenant Farming/Sharecropping tax laws hidden so well for so long, in spite of intensive searches in every field and profession for every possible usable tax provision.
There is no question that this Tenant/Sharecrop Cannabis Farm model could be abused, especially by corporate Cannabis with their unthinking accountant/attorney-driven predatory models, and could end in virtually enslaving homeless people seeking refuge and a job, but as long as local governments have appropriate regulatory and financial oversight of these kinds of communities, and as long as the residents of the affordable housing communities themselves and the advocacy groups that represent them have a solid role in governance, such abuse can be mitigated if not completely avoided everywhere.
Meanwhile if this model is in the hands of independent, non-corporate Cannabis businesses with a sense of the kind of humanity that can arise from creating communities of sustainable flower production, then maybe the promise of this beautiful gift of the Earth can intrinsically be realized in ways that sustain rather than exploit life.
On May 4, 2021 I sent the following letter to Janet Woodcock, Director of FDA (Janet.Woodcock@fda.hhs.gov) along with copies to top officials of FDA and editors at the Washington Post and NY Times. The FDA is sitting on top of the tobacco product pesticide atrocity, and is enabling the Tobacco Cartel’s suppression of all research on pesticide contamination of tobacco products and the relationship of that concealed chemical horror to 500,000 smoking deaths a year in the US – 7 Million people a year worldwide.
I’m sure the agency’s involvement in covering up this atrocity is so deep that the present stewards of this Federal behemoth are unlikely to be able to step back and admit that they have been terribly wrong, and that organic tobacco products could in fact save many, many lives. Organic tobacco products will not stop people from smoking but they will not harm most moderate smokers – it really is that simple. If FDA disputes that, first check the hard data and then let the very simple, very inexpensive studies begin. How likely is that? Nevertheless I believe that with enough light, the truth will not only emerge but will prevail.
Hello Director Woodcock – I would like to offer data from an FDA-funded NCSU study on the relative toxicity of Little Cigars vs Cigarettes to illustrate why much or perhaps all the research on smoking and health since the 1970s is very likely severely compromised and is probably useless as science. If what I am about to show you is as the hard data says it is, then none of the extensive and very expensive smoking and health research that used Kentucky Reference Cigarettes can be used to determine the actual threat to health posed by smoking tobacco. As you know, that means virtually 100% of all research on smoking and health.
Here is a representative dataset from this FDA-funded study that goes to the heart of the unrecognized but critically important problem of severely compromised data in almost every piece of smoking & health research since the 1970s. For such a simple little graphic the depths of the conspiracy and crime it reveals is truly remarkable. If that strikes you as exaggeration please read on.
The objective of the research, as you know, was to determine whether flavored Little Cigars are more toxic than non-flavored Little Cigars, and it is part of the years-long, multi-hundred million dollar campaign by FDA to regulate tobacco product flavoring.
Like all the other data in this extensive study, which you can review yourselves by clicking the link, this dataset shows that Little Cigars tested far more toxic than cigarettes to human lung tissue. Than ALL the cigarettes – and that’s what is critically important.
That small fact is the key to why all research using Kentucky Reference cigarettes has been compromised – the fact that as your own data reveal, Kentucky Reference Cigarettes are almost equally as toxic as Marlboros and Camels. Not only this dataset but every one in the study show the same thing – Kentucky Reference Cigarettes are about as toxic as Marlboros and Camels.
This remarkable fact is not noted by the researchers, who are laser-focused on discovering whether flavored little cigars are more toxic than unflavored little cigars. After extensive lab work and analysis, their research finds that both flavored and unflavored Little Cigars are equally toxic to human lung tissue. That makes them satisfied enough to recommend that all Little Cigars should be banned, not just the flavored ones. The researchers express puzzlement at why the flavored Swisher Sweets aren’t more toxic than the Unflavored, but they dismiss the finding in favor of the conclusion that regardless, Little Cigars are far more toxic than cigarettes. All cigarettes. Including the Kentucky Reference Cigarettes.
That is why I call this NCSU study clear evidence, yet to be proven by testing of Kentucky Reference Cigarettes, that the past 50 years of smoking and health research using them as the baseline have been so compromised as to be useless.
This data is from lab tests I commissioned as part of an independent research/writing project. The lab is fully qualified and credentialed to perform the tests. To my knowledge neither FDA nor any other public health agency has ever published such research. However, it is easily replicated and verified.
Wouldn’t you say that if Kentucky Reference cigarettes are as toxic as Marlboros and Camels then this data at least suggests that there may be some unrecognized confounding variables affecting research findings using Kentucky Reference Cigarettes? Wouldn’t that merit a quick test or two on some of the Kentucky Reference Cigarettes that are surely available in any of the 14 FDA ‘Tobacco Research’ labs?
Wouldn’t you say that the DDT, Carbendazim and Cypermethrin in the Swisher Sweets, among the 13 unique fungicides and insecticides in this brand (shown in red), might explain the differences in toxicity between this product and the Marlboro and Camel cigarettes, both in this data and in your FDA-funded research? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28447619/
And the Kentucky Reference Cigarettes as well, wouldn’t you say?
As you know Director Woodcock, Kentucky Reference Cigarettes have been the baseline standard for tobacco product research since the 1970s. They are the source of “tobacco” smoke and extract for most if not all of thousands of smoking and health studies.
Because they are the scientific reference standards for tobacco smoke, one would assume that when used as intended they would actually yield tobacco smoke or extract data, free of important confounding variables, and especially confounding variables that are known to the manufacturers of these reference cigarettes but never revealed to the research scientists using them as baseline standard references for tobacco smoke. However as you can see, at least some of the toxicity of Marlboros and Camels is clearly due to pesticide residues, and the difference in human lung cell toxicity between the three Marlboro, Camel and Kentucky Reference and the Swisher Sweets can rather dramatically be seen in the pesticides that are unique to Swisher Sweets.
Director Woodcock – what do you think would be the results of the NCSU study, or any of the thousands of other such compromised studies, if USDA Organic Tobacco cigarettes had been used as the baseline reference instead of Kentucky Reference cigarettes? Please look again at the dataset.
If Kentucky Reference Cigarettes are in fact contaminated with an unknown burden of pesticide residues, and if that burden makes them comparable in toxicity to other commercial cigarette brands, that how is it that they can be used as a baseline standard for tobacco smoke in research? What about the role of these unrecognized confounding variables in all the ‘smoking & health’ data that has used these ‘reference standards’ since the 1970s?
And Director Woodcock, may I point out that in my data, USDA organic tobacco cigarettes were used as the reference standard and as you can see in the data, is is pretty clear that the organic tobacco cigarettes are far less toxic than even the ‘natural’ tobacco cigarette, which is itself less toxic than the Marlboros, Camels and Swisher Sweets.
This is an easily-settled issue. Let’s test Kentucky Reference Cigarettes – current and archived samples, and get a clear picture of the hidden confounding variables that, if present, have been compromising smoking and health research for decades.
FDA has 14 full-scale tobacco research centers and spends hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing research on the dangers of mint and other flavors in tobacco products. With a budget of $500 I, or anyone else with access to a qualified pesticide testing lab, could prove or disprove the presence of pesticide residues in Kentucky Reference Cigarettes, and with a budget of $50,000 I could test the top 100 brands of cigarettes and little cigars for this hidden source of dangerous toxicity to smokers. In the hundreds of millions that FDA has funded in “tobacco” research, no such study has ever been funded by FDA.
Director Woodcock, I know that in the past, for various reasons, FDA has tried to suppress public awareness of the differences between organic, pesticide-free tobacco and pesticide-contaminated tobacco. However, in the face of the evidence I am presenting in this message I hope that FDA will overcome whatever political pressures have caused FDA to abandon its duty to protect the public and will cause FDA to take a more responsible approach to determining the relative hazards and safety of organic vs contaminated tobacco products.
To close this message I am enclosing links to a number of blog posts where I cite peer-reviewed science and hard data in support of the idea that the pesticides in tobacco products represent an unrecognized, non-trivial threat to the health of smokers which is almost completely preventable. Legislation that recognized the role of pesticide exposure in smoking disease and death, and acted to limit or eliminate that exposure, would do more for public health than eliminating mint and fruit flavors, which has been the FDA’s rather absurd passion and focus for decades.
Director Woodcock – open the shades and let in the light.
On this 4/20 day of celebration, 50 years after I published “Cultivators Handbook”, I have a breakthrough organic cigarette concept to offer to the community. It could change the way people access and smoke organic tobacco (and maybe cannabis) and it is so simple it hurts.
I’ve figured out how to make and sell 100% USDA certified organic tobacco cigarettes, real cigarettes in every way, that will sell for less than half of what smokers are paying now for ordinary (and highly contaminated) name-brand factory smokes, and to do it in a way that completely eliminates Federal tobacco product regulation AND taxation.
There’s no interpretation of obscure regulations involved, no iffy jailhouse lawyer legalisms, no depending on the definition of what is, is – just a giant gaping loophole in Federal tobacco regulations that has been totally overlooked. This plan is dead simple and is 100% worked out – it doesn’t actually need much work or money to implement and it will be self-funding almost from launch. It will change the way people smoke Organic Tobacco (and CBD Cannabis too), and if done right it will get very big, very strong, very fast.
It will also cut the legs out from under the Tobacco Cartel, their silent partners the Feds, and their useful idiots the anti-tobacco, anti-everything moralists, who will all be helpless to stop it. That will be so much fun.
(Of course, I could be totally wrong here and making a fool of myself with this announcement – but I don’t think so and anyway I don’t care.)
I’ve managed to do this kind of thing before – twice in my life. So if I’m right this would be #3.
I’m pretty sure this is an idea whose time is right, right now. But also right now I’m almost 80 and probably don’t have enough time left, and certainly don’t have the energy or resources, to make this happen so this needs to be in younger hands. But only the right hands. So I’m putting out a call. Here’s the explanation, and the deal.
The entire concept depends on a single, simple breakthrough realization. An “aha” experience. It’s happened to me before.
It happened years ago and resulted in the Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana. It was 1968. Things were gnarly for many of my dope growing brothers and sisters. I was bummed and scared too. Then one day a friend helped me I realize I didn’t have to actually grow Marijuana anymore. I could write a book sharing what I had learned. So I did. It worked. Lots of people realized they could easily grow their own. Boy were the Feds pissed. It got way out of their control way fast. Grannies started growing.
It was so much fun to say – tough luck J. Edgar. The First Amendment rules.
Those were the days when FBI agents wore dirty jeans and T-Shirts and scruffy beards to the “Legalize Pot” and “Stop The War” rallies – although interestingly their black shoes were always shined, their manicures were always impeccable, and they never ever had BO.
Even so, they were dogged and clever and I made sure there were no incriminating photos of me or my friends growing the magic plant in the book; there was just one photo as I recall – an old-time Fed standing next to a 10’ Cannabis plant.
Cultivators Handbook was just a little 100 page hand-drawn, IBM Selectric Courier 12 typed out pamphlet, but between what I sold myself and all the bootleg and pirate copies worldwide I figure that little book may have helped a couple of million people gain at least a degree of freedom from legal, governmental and moralistic tyrannies. Power to the People, as we used to say. I still believe it.
I had the same thing happen when I created American Spirit and called the product “natural tobacco” – as it turned out, a whole new category. I had been growing my own organic tobacco for years. I had shared handrolls and pipes with a lot of different people who all liked it, a lot, and so I figured people who liked smoking would always choose organic tobacco if they could get it. I had been studying what the Tobacco Cartel had been doing with pesticides on tobacco since the late 1940s, and was sure that was (and is) what is killing cigarette smokers. I also knew we couldn’t even get started if we had to jump through the USDA and FDA hoops. I tried talking with them but they had never heard of anyone wanting to certify tobacco as organic, and certainly not tobacco from New Mexico, but they knew a threat when they saw one and they were not happy.
I knew I couldn’t make any claims about organic tobacco being a safer smoke than the Cartel’s DDT-drenched tobacco, which was and is solidly defended by the government, but in an “aha” moment I realized that the Feds couldn’t do anything about the fact that that the word “natural” called up certain very particular ideas and associations in people’s minds. The late 70s and early 80s were a time when “natural” was the word of the day. There was my old friend the First Amendment again – much as they want to, and try to, neither the government nor the moralists can control the meaning of words. Natural tobacco was a natural.
I knew then, even before computers, that words are the human user interface. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
That’s why the right to use language free from oppression is sacred. God speech. Gospel.
Sooo – I started the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company. That little word is still giving the Feds apoplexy, along the anti-tobacco legions descended all the way from King James. Tough. I figure that American Spirit Organic tobacco has helped a couple of million people enjoy higher quality lives. I’m happy.
This new concept is the exact same thing, only as I said I’m almost 80 now and I know I have to hand it off to others to see it happen.
This can be either a huge business or a major social justice non-profit. Or both. Either way, it would get far too big far too fast for me to handle even if I started it myself, but it sure could make a lot of money and help a lot people if done right, and I want to be sure it gets into the right hands.
It’s likely that only the first one through the door who executes correctly with this concept will benefit. There will be hell to pay – lots of fun – and anyway, that seems to be the way the Tobacco Cartel and the world governments like it. How many new organic tobacco cigarette companies do you see, although Japan Tobacco paid $6 Billion just for the rights to the name “American Spirit” a few years ago? Organic tobacco is already a huge business even though it is kept walled off from the rest of the Cartel’s properties. That should be a clue to what people want – but how many other organic American Spirits do you see? None. By the way, you see plenty of “Naturals”, but I’ve already explained that natural means what you want it to mean. Organic only means one thing.
So there may also be only one of what I am proposing, because there will be fierce opposition as soon as the first one appears, but one operation done right will be enough, and it would have to be grandfathered (or could be taken offshore) even if the relevant laws were changed.
If you want to help, or if you’re the one or the ones to make this happen, please make the effort to convince me. I don’t know if any, or how many people are going to make a run at this, but I am only going to share the concept the one person or group who I come to believe can make this happen in the right way for the right reasons. I am also reaching out through my personal ntwork but want to open this to serendipity so here’s my announcement to any and all.
If you’re the one, or the group, or the movement to take this and make it happen, then read my books, read my blog, and figure out what would convince me. I am not selling anything. I am looking for proposals.
Don’t call or message me – email. And please don’t expect a reply unless I want to go to stage two – having you talk with several people whose judgment about people I trust completely and show them why you’re the one to work with to make this happen.
Women born between 1950 and 1972 whose mother smoked and who struggle today in 2021 with Obesity, Diabetes or Breast Cancer have a high evidence-based probability that their life-threatening illness was caused by genetic damage that DDT in their mother’s cigarettes did to them before they were born, while they were still in the womb.
These women, who may or may not be smokers themselves, may or may not have been damaged by the tobacco in their mother’s cigarettes, but they were definitely damaged by the DDT contaminating the tobacco in those cigarettes. We now know that the even tiniest exposure to DDT in the womb leads to a wide range of drastic illness later in life. In links to published research later in this post you can see straight from the labs evidence from the period that the tobacco industry knew all about DDT, Toxaphene, Heptachlor, Endrin, Chlordane, and many more bioactive insect and fungus-killing chemicals in those miraculous Marlboros and every other brand pitched to all those irritable Mommies who needed a smoke to calm down and stay slim.
If this situation describes you or anyone you care about, in this post I’ll show you published hard evidence that we can say with certainty that your Mom’s cigarettes were heavily contaminated with DDT, because DDT contaminated every cigarette and cigar brand in the period 1950-1972, and that DDT contamination persists even up to this day in many brands.
I’ll show you hard evidence of this supertoxic contamination, concealed from your Mother and every other smoker, and every smoker’s child, for over 50 years. I will also show you hard evidence that your Obesity, Diabetes or Breast Cancer, if those are your burdens, was likely caused by genetic damage to you from DDT exposure while your Mother was pregnant with you – even if she paused her smoking while she was pregnant. It was already too late – the DDT was already circulating in her blood and stored in her tissues waiting for that fertilized egg that was you.
That’s bad enough news, isn’t it? But the really sinister part is that the cigarette industry and the US government knew then, and they’ve known all along since then, that tobacco products are heavily contaminated with DDT and many, many other insecticides and fungicides, and there was enough evidence that this was a serious human health threat beginning in the 1950s. In 2021 there is zero doubtabout what DDT does to the human body, especially the developing unborn human body, nor is there any doubt what inhaling combinations of these chemicals do to human genetics. This is a story that takes a bit of telling but it begins with simple awareness on the part of anyone who realizes that this may be their story too.
First let me ask you to reflect – has anyone ever mentioned DDT or pesticides to you in anything you’ve ever heard about smoking and health? You may not even have heard of DDT at all – many people today haven’t. I can tell you for sure that you haven’t heard about the health consequences of inhaling DDT or all the other pesticides in cigarettes from any doctor, public health official, or anti-tobacco advocate. There are some very good reasons for that incredible “omission” in public health information, but here’s a sampling of new research just on the links between maternal exposure to DDT and the daughter’s (and grand-daughter’s) Obesity, Breast Cancer, and Diabetes. This information reflects what every government regulator ought to know, and what every Tobacco Cartel scientist and executive already knows. Why do you think they work so hard to keep the lid on?
“Maternal o,p’-DDT was positively associated with a 26% (95% CI: 6–49) to 31% (95% CI: 6–62) higher risk of overweight and the same magnitude of additional risk for obesity…”
Conclusions
“These data indicate maternal DDT exposure is significantly associated with increased obesity risk among middle-aged women independent of the obesity definition, confounding, and obesity risk factors.“
“Observations indicate ancestral exposure to DDT can promote obesity and associated disease transgenerationally. The etiology of disease such as obesity may be in part due to environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.”
BREAST CANCER & CIGARETTE DDT
The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (2015)
“Conclusions: p, p’-DDT was associated with breast cancer through age 54 years. Risk depended on timing of first exposure and diagnosis age, suggesting susceptibility windows and an induction period beginning in early life. DDT appears to be an endocrine disruptor with responsive breast targets from in utero to menopause”
Is that enough to show that a Mother inhaling DDT a few hundred times a day through smoking contaminated cigarettes might be putting her children at risk for Obesity and Breast Cancer? OK, if it is, then let’s proceed.
There’s lots more similar research. Just search for ‘DDT obesity” or “DDT endocrine” or “DDT Breast” or DDT Diabetes” and you’ll get the point very fast.
By the way, if you’re thinking “Well, how much harm could a little bit of DDT in cigarettes do and why would it be causing me to be Obese, have Diabetes, or have to deal with Breast Cancer?” – please understand that in the case of DDT exposure of a developing child through the mother’s blood in the mother’s womb, dose doesn’t matter.
Timing is everything, and if Mom is inhaling even a few nanograms of DDT with every puff then it will be there when the egg and sperm come together and the new human life begins. Here’s some of the new science:
There are really two stories here. The first concerns women today who were born anytime between 1947-1972 to mothers who smoked then, and the second story concerns women smoking certain brands from then through to today in 2021. In this post I’m staying with the first story, although here’s a look at what today’s smokers are inhaling.
To summarize and put it bluntly, Tobacco products from 1947 through roughly 1972 were very heavily contaminated with DDT and other organochlorine pesticides and everybody in the industry and the government knew it. Very little of the original research is available today, but you can get an idea of what was going on in those days – while your mother or grandmother was smoking – by looking here and here andhere andhere and here.
Even glancing through these scientific journal sources, paying special attention to all the references, is there any question that the Tobacco industry knew then what was going on? Can you see how much effort went into looking at DDT and other pesticides in cigarettes? Do you imagine the Tobacco Cartel knows less about pesticides in their products today? So I would ask again – have you ever heard one mention of pesticides as a health hazard to smokers?
So, putting that old and long-concealed data above together with the 2020 Obesity/DDT research also above, it looks like if your mother was exposed to DDT with every puff of her cigarettes 1950-1972, then if you become obese due to genetic damage then it doesn’t matter what or how much you eat, or how much you exercise, or anything else you can do. There’s a 30-60% chance that your body’s drive to become and stay obese was programmed in by DDT damage to your mother’s DNA in the egg that became you, as well as directly to your own cellular being while you were becoming a human being inside your mother’s DDT-contaminated body.
If you are not struggling with obesity, good for you, but unfortunately as I said in the beginning there’s also a lot of solid research linking maternal DDT exposure to their daughters developing middle-age Breast Cancer (see also here and here and here) and Diabetes among many other equally terrible outcomes like birth defects in babies exposed to DDT in today’s cheap flavored little cigars.
By the way, a large body of published research says that if your Father was exposed to DDT, like maybe he was a smoker too, then the little sperm that also became you along with that damaged egg was also DDT damaged. Double jeopardy. And if you’re a male child of a smoker from 1950-1972, then testicular cancer is only one of the risks you’ve inherited from the cigarettes that Mom thought were OK to smoke while she was pregnant.
DDT is one of about 20 known Human Obesogens, chemicals that cause breaks in the human genome that are proven to lead to both current and next-generational obesity that isn’t controlled by diet. Good thing that DDT has been banned worldwide except for Malaria control since 1972, right?
But in a pregnant human body it can’t stay put in any tissues or cells. Some of that stored DDT is always oozing out making its way into the blood and lymphatic systems of a pregnant woman, and the reason it is so dangerous is that it can totally defeat the body’s defenses against toxins, slide across the protective placental barrier and go straight for the developing child.
By the way, that’s what it was designed to do to baby bugs when it was first designed in Germany in 1939, and after all these years it is still one of the world’s most effective bug killers. It’s so good that it’s banned worldwide for use on anything but Malaria mosquitos, where it’s the only chemical that can control Malaria epidemics. No other pesticide is as good at destroying life in as many things or in as many ways. Neurological, endocrinological, reproductive systems and more – DDT covers them all, and at molecular levels where dose doesn’t matter.
So if your mother was a smoker 1950-1972, and you’re struggling with obesity today in 2021, that’s quite likely what was going on with you while you were developing into the human being you are today.
The research says that children of smokers who were born 1950-1972 are far more likely to become obese in middle age regardless of their diet or lifestyle. In other words – nothing they can do about it. The DDT in the tobacco products their mother smoked has permanently altered their genetics. It did exactly what it was designed to do, attack the developing life inside the mother, except that mother was supposed to be a bug or rat or beetle. DDT wasn’t ever supposed to be literally infused into an unborn human child.
Except – it works so well on Tobacco, killing everything in the field without any hand labor. It is very, very profitable. And it is used today by companies in the global Tobacco cartel – completely illegally of course, but the fix is in.
While DDT was phased out on US tobacco crops in the 1970s, American manufacturers moved their growing operations to friendly countries like India and Brazil that don’t ask questions. Since the fix is also in with US authorities this DDT-contaminated tobacco is being imported and used today in American tobacco products.
I’ve only been able to test a few brands privately, but so far DDT contamination of popular tobacco brands is running 20%. That’s just DDT. Of course that’s very illegal, and it’s doing to pregnant smokers and their babies exactly what it was doing 70 years ago, but who cares? More important – who knows? The Tobacco Cartel all know, every one of them. But do they care? Sure they care, but what do you think they care about?
And also the FDA, EPA, USDA, CDC, Surgeon General, Truth Initiative, and SmokeFree Kids all know about pesticides in cigarettes, but they also know that if the public ever figures out that it isn’t smoking Tobacco that’s killing smokers and crippling their babies. then the anti-smoking game is up.
If people ever become aware that its inhaling what the Cartel uses simply to grow their Tobacco more profitably that is responsible for so much suffering and death, and that everybody involved has agreed to keep quiet about for decades, then the anti-tobacco game would be up. And then it wouldn’t be long before people started asking how it’s possible that all these agencies and organizations have been taking Billions of dollars in taxes and donated money and spending it on – what? Propaganda they knew was actually distracting people from seeing the truth.We know they knew because they all, every one of them, very suddenly and mysteriously all stopped talking about pesticides in cigarettes around 1972. Fifty years ago. Whole scientific journals had been devoted to tobacco and cigarette pesticide research since the 1940s and then – nothing more published.
Again, you can see samples of what was being publishedhere and here andhere and here and here. Look at the reference sections of these papers – you’ll see that there was a whole research universe devoted to examining pesticides in Tobacco and Tobacco products.
This all literally disappeared right around the time that the world was waking up to DDT – first banned worldwide in 1972. And now it’s 2021, and women born to mothers who smoked during those years are discovering they can’t lose weight no matter what, and they have Diabetes, and they have Breast Cancer, and not a single woman has yet connected what’s happening to her to what the DDT and other toxins Tobacco companies left in her Mother’s cigarettes after fumigating their fields and warehouses, using chemicals instead of labor without regard for the health of millions alive and smoking and many many millions yet unborn.
If that’s you or someone you love, they are the victims of a crime committed in full knowledge by the Tobacco Cartel and then concealed for 50 years by everyone with that knowledge.
Would your Mother have smoked those cigarettes if she had known they were drenched with DDT, after reading or hearing about Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, which everyone in 1972 was talking about? DDT was all over the nightly news in those days. My guess is that neither your Mom nor millions of other women who were smokers in the 1970s would have taken another puff if they had just known about the DDT – much less the dozens of other equally dangerous pesticides.
She never had the chance to make a choice because the information was either somehow just overlooked, by everyone, or it was deliberately concealed, by everyone. Take your pick. And please take a look.
This post is going to be short because the information is simply what it is.
The Nazi companies who experimented on human beings to develop nerve gasses in WWII concentration camps are the same companies drenching tobacco crops worldwide in 2021 with concealed nerve poisons and reproductive toxins while blocking any government regulation, oversight or research of any kind on the health impact of inhaling these pesticides by smoking tobacco products.
These Nazi enterprises have not only not gone away, their programs and agendas are proceeding without interruption. One of them is the largest pesticide manufacturer in the world, Bayer’s “Crop Science” megalith.
“This article explores the toxicological and physiological research into the mechanisms of action of these novel nerve agents, and the emergence of military research objectives in neurophysiological and neurotoxicological research. Recently declassified Allied military intelligence files document secret nerve agent research, leading to intensified research on anticholinesterase agents in the peripheral and the central nervous system.”
Anticholinesterase agents – which includes the Organophosphorous and Carbamate pesticides. Nerve poisons. As found contaminating almost every cigarette and tobacco product brand in the US and the rest of the world. Not DDT – it acts differently on living beings. These nerve poisons were developed to finish the job that agents like DDT only began, once insects got tougher and even DDT didn’t do the whole job. From the “Green Revolution” through “Better Living Through Chemistry” all in a straight line from Nazi Germany’s emperiments on human beings. You can get an idea of what the Tobacco industry would up doing with all that Nazi ‘research’ by looking at a few bits of the surviving evidence from industry publications before the mid-1970s ‘cleansing’ of the worlds publications on the topic of pesticides and tobacco products. Some of this fascinating early Cartel research on DDT in cigarettes can be found here and here and here and here andhere.
Here is a German pesticide company executive bragging about how Phosphine, their updated version of Zyklon B performs in American tobacco warehouses today, with the full consent and support of USDA, EPA and FDA:
“Adhering to the dosages, concentrations, and exposure times recommended in the relevant CORESTA Guide No. 2 will ensure that all four life cycles of an insect (that is, egg, larvae, pupae, and adult) are reliably exterminated. Almost needless to say that rodents also perish during treatment.”
Insects and, needless to say, mammals too. And reliably exterminated as well. What an ideal gas!
So here’s an example of that Anticholinesterase “research” done by Bayer that has made them the most profitable pesticide manufacturer in the world. I found these cold bureaucratic directions in correspondence between Bayer and the Auschwitz camp commanders, bargaining over the price to be paid for delivering human beings for experimentation to produce the anticholinesterase gasses that would become the foundation of Bayer’s pesticide fortunes. Bayer is the biggest producer of pesticides in the world, by far. Guess how they got so big? They had a huge head start, helped along by the US military. This was after the US military knew about things like this:
From Bayer: “We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If that is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need 150 women.”
Apparently those negotiations went well, because this was sent from the same Bayer office to Auschwitz a few weeks later:
From Bayer: “The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price.“
quotes from: Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees (in)
To round out this post, while an unknown proportion of the world’s 7 million smokers who die from smoking each year – not from tobacco – are directly attributable to Nazi chemical science applied to cigarettes. All the monstrous chemical companies that have grown rich and fat off those deaths are doing just fine. Then of course there are all those highly profitable Chinese and Indian companies so it isn’t just the Nazis benefitting from the fruits of WWII human experimentation. Was that the end of human experimentation? Let’s ask a few prisoners in China and India.
“In China and the Indian Archipelago, and wherever else opium is smoked, we ought to endeavour to supply it as pure and cheap as possible. It makes milder smoking than tobacco, and is evidently beneficial in many ways; and we may rest assured that mankind, where it has once taken to it, will never give up smoking either opium, tobacco, or some other such stuff, however silly it may look. It is not really sillier than eating and drinking, or any other natural action to look at, while it is undoubtedly one of the least alloyed of the pleasures of the senses, if, indeed, it may not be said to be almost a supersensuous pleasure; for it seems, in some way past searching out, to possess the true magic which spiritualises sense.”
32 million Americans are living with diagnosed type 2 diabetes, and 25% of these folks are smokers – about 7,000,000 people. Because they are diabetic, these smokers face aspecial set of severe hazardsfrom deliberately concealed highly bioactive insecticide and fungicide chemicals that every US Agency – FDA, EPA, USDA, CDC, the Surgeon General, FTC – all know are present and are being concealed but refuse to regulate or even inspect for in cigarettes. These are not those mysterious “additives”, or those infamous and ridiculous “7000 chemicals”, or any of the other nasty things we’ve all been told for years are dangers to smokers. These bioactive chemicals are a completely different level of hazard to human health, but you’ve never once heard about them in any anti-tobacco propaganda. They are potent, very dangerous and in some instances banned (but used on tobacco and inhaled with every puff) insecticides and fungicides that are proven Diabetes hazards (see also here and here) that have never once been mentioned in any government ‘smoking & health’ research or in any of the anti-tobacco programs and propaganda. They are doing irreparable harm to every smoker every day and are leading every smoker toward Diabetes, but for a smoker who already has Diabetes, inhaling this concealed witch’s brew with every puff is slowly and severely damaging their organs and nerves far beyond anything else in their life. And this is all completely and easily preventable.
“After reviewing 21 previous studies, researchers found exposure to any type of pesticide was associated with a 61 percent increased risk for any type of diabetes. The increased risk for type 2 diabetes — the most common type — was 64 percent, the investigators found.”
So it’s worth asking – how much of the daily and long-term damage Diabetic smokers are suffering from smoking contaminated tobacco cigarettes, meaning virtually every commercial brand, could be 100% prevented by switching to organic tobacco cigarettes? I wonder what would happen if a Diabetic smoker could eliminate just those pesticides without having to face the often futile struggle of “quitting”? For anyone who might think – “But that’s not a solution! That”s still smoking!” I’ll simply point to the impeccable logic behind needle exchange and condom distribution programs. You deal with the harm you can deal with.
My answer is that the damage from cigarette pesticides is actually 100% preventable and it doesn’t mean that Diabetic smokers have to go through the agonies of quitting tobacco or switch to lettuce cigarettes in order to stop harming themselves. All any Diabetic smoker has to do is switch to organic tobacco cigarettes for a week to begin feeling better than they’ve felt in a long time and see their numbers begin to improve. That’s correct. Once you know that these severely hazardous pesticide contaminants are in the cigarettes you’re smoking, and once you know what they are doing to your health, it’s just common sense to avoid them if you can, and if you do even for a little while you’ll see for yourself.
This is an incredibly easy fix to a horrible, widespread problem. It’s not a total solution, but it’s a good fix for those who need it. Diabetic smokers do not have to quit smoking tobacco to quit damaging themselves with inhaled neurotoxins, mutagens, teratogens, genotoxins, obesogens, and the other classes of highly bioactive insecticide/fungicide chemicals that are concealed as cigarette contaminants with full US government knowledge and complicity. I’ll show you the hard data below on the pesticides in just one common brand, smoked by over Two Million US Diabetics, with links to other equally compelling hard evidence.
Some kinds of change need a nationwide movement, but this revolution in Diabetic health can and should take place one smoker at a time as individual smokers realize that they can take control and help heal themselves without going through the agonies and depressing failures of trying to quit smoking. Equally important is that 20,000,000 pre-diabetic smokers in the US, and untold millions more worldwide, can each acting on their own, have a positive impact on their own health even if they don’t stop smoking. It’s what smokers are inhaling along with the tobacco in the tobacco product they”re smoking that creates this 100% preventable threat to their health, completely separately from the harm that the tobacco itself may or may not be doing. Please let me show you the evidence.
This post and related posts on this blog offer hard data to show that this severe hazard to health that exists far beneath everybody’s level of awareness can be 100% prevented by individual Diabetic smokers making a simple, easy choice that the US Government, the Tobacco Cartel, and the Anti-smoking/Anti-tobacco forces all want to keep them from making. That statement may be hard to believe, so let me offer you the hard evidence that this hazard is real and painfully obvious once it’s seen, and then let me offer the simple painless solution.
Let’s Look At Marlboros
Since Marlboro is most popular US cigarette brand, with a 40% share of all cigarette smokers, I’ll assume there are roughly 2.5 million Marlboro-smoking diabetics. Let’s see what’s happening to all those cowboys.
First, when it comes to Diabetes, let’s all notice that the CDC uses the words “causes Diabetes” in the statement below, which is about as certain as any science-based statement can be, but also notice that it is “smoking” that “causes” Diabetes, not “smoking tobacco” – which is what we are all supposed to assume is meant:
“We now know that smoking causes type 2 diabetes. In fact, smokers are 30–40% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than nonsmokers. And people with diabetes who smoke are more likely than nonsmokers to have trouble with insulin dosing and with controlling their disease.”
But what no government agency will ever tell these 2.5 million Diabetics who smoke Marlboros, or any other brand, is that they are being exposed with every puff to a ‘cocktail’ of unregulated insecticides and fungicides concealed in those cigarettes many of which on their own, when someone who is Diabetic is exposed, are known to severely complicate Type 2 Diabetes. And the fact also is that there has never once been a study on the health effects of smoking tobacco by itself – no contaminants, no additives, no reconstituted tobacco waste – just pure leaf. Never one research study. There are thousands of research studies of pesticides and human health, but zero on inhaling pesticides from cigarettes. None. There hasn’t even been a study on pesticide contaminants in cigarettes since around 1970 when the Tobacco Cartel realized they had a big problem and chose to conceal it.
You can browse a few examples of the surviving tobacco/cigarette pesticide research that virtually ended in the 1970shere and here and here and here and here. You will not find anything similar in the past 50 years. Neither the Cartel nor the US government want smokers to have a clue. Nothing to see here. Move along.
But before we get to that let’s fact-check that statement on the concealed pesticides in Marlboros and while we’re at it let’s check a few other brands too.
Here are hard data showing the fungicides and insecticides found in Marlboro cigarettes and other brands pulled off-the-shelf from area mini-marts by professional lab staff using randomized selection – I didn’t select the tobacco products to be tested – during 2018 lab tests of major US cigarette brands for my book “Smoke No Evil”. The lab I used is highly qualified to test for pesticide residues on commercial tobacco substrate due to its EU corporate parentage. The choice of USDA certified organic tobacco as the reference substrate was the lab’s decision, as was the inclusion of American Spirit Blues in the product selection. Here’s what the lab found – and here’s what any Federal regulatory agency could find anytime they looked.
It may be easy to just scan and dismiss that list, especially things labelled “trace”, but please slow down – each one of these pesticides has its own set of impacts on areas of special concern to Diabetics like glucose metabolism, inflammation, neuropathy, and other critical health issues for Diabetics. You can prove this for yourself.
Try this little exercise. Search the name of any of these pesticides plus any diabetic condition or complication together at random – “Azoxystrobin and neurotoxicity” for example, or “Bifenthrin and glucose”, or “Chlorantraniliprole and neurological”, or “ Penconazole and testicular”, or “ Fluopicolide and nephrotoxicity” or “Trifloxystrobin and neuropathy“.
Just poke around with whatever “Name of Marlboro pesticide/Diabetic symptom/condition” combinations interest you. By the way, those are random combinations above – try your own pesticide/condition combinations too, and please keep this research in mind while you browse:
“After reviewing 21 previous studies, researchers found exposure to any type of pesticide was associated with a 61 percent increased risk for any type of diabetes. The increased risk for type 2 diabetes — the most common type — was 64 percent, the investigators found.”
Just poke around in the science. No need to deep-dive at first – you’ll quickly get a sense of how broad this problem really is – and this is just set of pesticides from one brand. Other brands have very different pesticide profiles, and each insecticide and fungicide has very different impacts on Diabetes – much of it not yet studied. But with the search strategy above you can easily browse the already-known effects of exposure to the multiple highly bioactive pesticides that every Diabetic Marlboro smoker is inhaling +/-600 times a day – if they’re just a pack-a-day smoker.
Even more stunning when you think about it – not one doctor treating any Diabetic patient who smokes is aware that they are inhaling this incredible pesticide cocktail every day, because not one research study has ever been published on the subject, and there has never been a medical journal article raising even the possibility that this could be a problem for smokers. Research in this area has been completely absent from the world’s journals for over 50 years – although there is plenty of research on the consequences of exposure to pesticides – exposure to many of these pesticides alone, much less in combination, is known to lead to Type 2 and then if a Diabetic is exposed to make their Type 2 symptoms much worse. There’s plenty of research on that, but nothing on pesticides in cigarettes. Could this be a simple oversight? Oops – missed that one.
Not bloody likely – right? Here are examples of the kind of cigarette pesticide research that suddenly disappeared after the early 1970s, when the Tobacco Cartel realized what it all meant, you can browse a few examples of surviving tobacco/cigarette pesticide research here and here and here and here and here. All the Billions of dollars spent on “Smoking & Health” research and not one single study that simply compares smoking tobacco without pesticide contaminants with smoking contaminated tobacco products. Not even one study anywhere that said – “Hey, just for fun and because it’s dead simple to do, let’s just see what kinds of pesticide residues smokers are inhaling from these brands of cigarettes.” Not once.
This means of course that any complications of Diabetes symptoms due to this 100% preventable pesticide exposure are also 100% hidden from the Doctor’s view and can’t be detected much less diagnosed or appropriately treated. It also means the Diabetic smoker can’t make a fully informed decision about their own options. Very few smokers know there are organic tobacco product options, or why organic tobacco matters dramatically to their health and quality of life. With everything lumped together under “smoking” it’s impossible for a smoker or their doctor to be aware of the potentially hugely important differences between smoking tobacco with and without pesticide contamination – everything else kept the same.
So its also important to note that while we found ten Marlboro fungicides and pesticides above the level of detection, the fact is that in every cigarette brand there will always be dozens of other residues below those levels. (See the section at the end of this post for a long, long list of bioactive insecticidal and fungicidal chemicals known to be widely used on tobacco and known to leave residues.)
So if you’re wondering why its important that there are pesticide residues even below the levels of detection, let’s get a common mis-conception out of the way – that the size of the dose matters. That’s just in case anyone is tempted to say “Oh look here, that’s only a small amount of those pesticides, just a little trace, less than we can even detect. That little bit might kill tiny bugs, but how much damage could that infinitely small amount of pesticide do to a human?”
Please check this link: solid new neurotoxicology science tells us that a trace is all it takes for many new pesticides to perform exactly as designed. They don’t depend on dosage for firepower. They are 100% stealthy by design and even a few molecules on-target on-time will do the job on any endocrine system or any nervous system or any reproductive system of any living creature.Oh, and a blend of those designer supertoxins … what do you suppose they do to human beings when they’re all working together, like they’re supposed to?Nobody knows because nobody has ever imagined that anyone would be inhaling these insecticide/fungicide combinations, at any level.
Toxicology
“Toxic effects of pesticide mixtures at a molecular level: their relevance to human health”
The widely-held message in the toxicology science literature is that many if not most pesticides do their damage at molecular levels, far below the limits of detection, and science has demonstrated in the case of many of these pesticides that the classic dose-response model doesn’t apply, so dismissing pesticide contamination of tobacco products as a minor issue because of dosage is counter-factual.
This also ignores the fact that, for example, even the tiny concentrations of some of these pesticides on the tobacco in the brands we first tested in 2018 FAR EXCEEDED allowable limits on any other consumable food or food product. That Azoxystrobin in Marlboros is way over limits for food, but you don’t inhale broccoli or catfish, right? Besides, your gut can handle a lot more than your lungs, and your gut is set up to protect your body from neurotoxins but your lungs are a wide-open pathway to every vital organ – no barriers.
In fact, you don’t inhale pesticides into your lungs from any other consumer product; contaminated food and drink go through your digestive system and produce completely different outcomes from the same pesticide inhaled. For example, eating DDT isn’t an issue unless it is at very very high levels – almost by the spoonful. But even a trace of inhaled DDT goes straight into your bloodstream where it heads straight for your organs, glands, nervous system and DNA. (No, we didn’t find DDT in Marlboros, but we found enormous concentrations in Swisher Sweets.)
Bottom line – those fungicides and insecticides you see in the data above are severely damaging the health of the 2.5 million diabetics who are smoking Marlboros regardless of any damage the tobacco in those cigarettes may or may not be doing to them too.
Thing is – this damage from the insecticides and fungicides is 100% preventable, simply and easily.
So What Can A Diabetic Smoker Do Besides Quit?
Like almost all cigarette smokers most Diabetics want to quit, but like all smokers most of them who try simply can’t. They’ve tried, many times. It’s just too difficult. So like most non-Diabetic smokers they figure they just have to live with the damage their smoking does, although like all smokers they keep trying to quit or cut down or do something, anything. Nothing seems to work so they keep smoking cigarettes that keep exposing them to these hidden pesticides, that nobody knows are there, that are doing who knows how much of the harm, and causing who knows how much of the suffering, completely independent of any actual “tobacco” that may be in their Marlboro cigarette.
That’s pure tragedy. If they only knew that they don’t have to stop smoking to stop inhaling pesticides, which is even more important for Diabetics than for non-Diabetic smokers. A simple switch to organic tobacco cigarettes or RYO and they wouldn’t be inhaling pesticides when they fired up.
100% 0f the damage to their Diabetic state being caused by hidden, unregulated pesticides in their Marlboros is 100% preventable – they can easily and comfortably switch to organic tobacco cigarettes or organic tobacco RYO and completely eliminate that part of the damage from smoking.
Would that be enough to make a difference? Go back and Google some of those Marlboro pesticide/Diabetes outcome combinations. Check out some of the links. Decide for yourself.
Doctors do know that Diabetics who continue to smoke do worse, and Diabetics are even discovering that vaping pure nicotine instead of smoking seems improve their condition a bit. Both doctors and patients think that’s because the patients aren’t smoking tobacco anymore, confusing tobacco with cigarettes as we’ve all been trained to do, but IMO it’s quite likely because they aren’t inhaling pesticides anymore. But why debate this – why not just try eliminating pesticides in your cigarette smoke and see how you do, for starters.
So Why Not Just Quit Smoking And Start Vaping?
A major ‘real-world’ problem with diabetic smokers substituting vaping for smoking is that vaping a cloud of flavored nicotine just isn’t the same as smoking a cigarette for most smokers. Even those who hate cigarettes and want to quit still actually enjoy the act of smoking, which is one of the strongest reasons so many Diabetic smokers can’t or won’t quit. I have never yet seen a research study that begins with the assumption that people like smoking tobacco and that’s the reason they find it so hard to quit – because they really don’t want to at the same time they really do. So what is it that smokers actually want to quit?
I think many smokers want to quit feeling bad but would like to keep smoking tobacco if they could. I think smokers want a tobacco cigarette that is just tobacco, grown without pesticides and made with only natural flavorings and ingredients. And additives.
Natural additives? Yes of course flavor and aroma additives – just not industrial chemical additives. Natural herbs and fruits and roots and barks and berries – definitely yes. Tobacco has been flavored with those things for thousands of years. The whole FDA thing about “Additives” is a hoax, just like the whole thing about “Warnings” is a hoax. As long as everyone is distracted arguing about mint nobody is going to start asking questions about Azoxystrobin or Penconazole.
Anyone remember the “Tar & Nicotine” hoohah? Anybody ever ask what “Tar” is? The short answer is – no. Technically it’s the condensed smoke of a cigarette, so would that include pesticide residues? If that “Tar” came from Kentucky Reference cigarettes it did, but nobody looked and nobody found, so it remains just “Tar”. Could there be a reason why all that stuff is just lumped together and called “Tar”? Maybe we’re supposed to nod and pass on by and say “Oh yeah, tar.”
For those Marlboro smokers who don’t care to be manipulated a moment longer here’s a simple little experiment – starting tomorow, switch to pesticide-free organic tobacco cigarettes for one month and see how you feel and what your numbers look like. Don’t change anything else you’re doing – just change from whatever cigarette brand you’re smoking to an organic brand.
American Spirit Organic cigarettes are a convenient widely available choice — BUT none of their “natural tobacco” brands are organic tobacco and they are NOT free of insecticides and fungicides. If you decide to free yourself from what pesticides in cigarettes are doing to your health then choose only Americn Spirit organic cigarettes or, better yet, organic American Spirit Roll Your Own (RYO).
So far I have only been able to test one American Spirit brand and while it was less contaminated than several other brands I was able to test, only the American Spirit USDA certified organic tobacco brand is free of pesticides. Calling the other Americn Spirit brands ‘natural’ appears to be a statement of fact but its actually meaningless as far as eliminating your exposure to tobacco product pesticides. Only “USDA Organic” tobacco, no matter what the brand (and I hope there will soon be many choices) is free of those pesticide residues that Marlboro smokers are currently inhaling 600 times a day or more.
Smokers can also buy organic tobacco online and roll their own cigarettes, which is a great way to be able to combine organic tobacco with organic CBD or THC Cannabis, for example, but for a Diabetic smoker who simply wants to try the effects of eliminating inhaled pesticides from their life for a month, pre-rolled American Spirit Organic cigarettes are the obvious choice of convenience.
Turn your back on the propaganda, check out the science, think for yourself and try switching to organic tobacco, and see how you’re feeling in about a week. Then watch your numbers for a month. Then share what you’ve learned with others.
BONUS SECTION
If you really want to deep dive into the connection between Diabetes symptoms and conditions here’s a pretty confidential list (from a private lab) of most or all the pesticides that various US agencies say are OK to use on tobacco – and then never test for at all in any way in cigarettes. Not all of these are currently in use on US tobacco but worldwide there are all these and many more being used on tobacco that winds up in cigarettes. You’ll be hard-pressed to find this list in any US Government agency publication. This is not information that anyone, government or Tobacco Cartel, want you to have.
This table shows two Federal agencies approving of and regulating pesticides used on tobacco crops, but we know they never test tobacco products for those same pesticides to see what smokers are being exposed to. These pesticides are all approved by EPA, USDA and others for use on tobacco in the US, but not a single one was ever tested for its health effects when inhaled prior to or after its approval for use on tobacco crops. Every one of those pesticides you see in Marlboros was approved with ZERO testing of its health impact when inhaled – which is of course the ONLY way that tobacco is used. Oh, right – chewing tobacco. There’s plenty of science on what happens to mucosal tissue when its chronically exposed to pesticides, and of course the pesticides in that chewing tobacco are absorbed very efficiently. They are also absorbed 100% – none have been combusted by smoking, so all the pesticides in a wad of chew are available to enter blood and lymph. And neither smokers nor chewers, nor pipe nor cigar smokers, nor blunt rollers, are never told that they are in danger and have a choice – not a hint, never. The doctors don’t know either – everybody is dead certain, without the question ever being asked, that its smoking tobacco that’s sickening and killing people and they never go one step further.
There’s been a lot of money spent over the years to ensure that nobody ever thinks to take that line of reasoning another step. Of course its the tobacco. Everybody knows that.
Please keep in mind that many of these residues will never show up even if tobacco products are tested for them because they will be present below the limit of detection. However, as the science proves as you saw earlier, and is proving more every day, many of them are highly bioactive at even the molecular level. Still when you Google any of them in combination with any of the main Diabetic conditions I’m quite certain you may very well wonder why this information has never once been investigated in over 50 years of progress in Smoking & Health Research.
For example, check here’s one of the first links that come up when you search the first pesticide on the list “methamidophos” along with “diabetes”. You won’t hit every time – not every pesticide has been researched for its impact on Diabetes, and in the pesticide approval process nobody asks that question. Probably just an oversight, right? After all, how many people are going to be inhaling methamidophos along with dozens of others on this list? Where would anyone encounter methamidosphos in a normal everyday environment? Hmmm.
40 million or so American smokers and about a Billion people worldwide, that’s who. Oh, and their children if Mommy smokes, and 25% of women who smoke keep right on smoking through pregnancy. So that’s what – a couple of hundred million children born after being exposed to pesticides 24/7 throughout their development.
So now check out the pesticide cocktail ingredients a one-pack smoker is inhaling 600X a day.
Table I: Percent recoveries for pesticides included in the EPA approved list and USDA monitoring list for tobacco determined using QuEChERS extraction, dSPE cleanup, and GCxGC-TOFMS analysis.
