I’ld like to share hard evidence with you showing that pesticides in cigarettes inhaled during pregnancy by generations of smoking mothers since the 1950s very likely explain at least some of the current Meth & Fentanyl epidemics, as well as our more chronic addiction to alcohol.
Although fairly widespread amphetamine abuse and addiction began shortly after their invention and first military uses in WWII, and although generations of people have used amphetamines and opioids as prescription medicines, the Meth and Fentanyl epidemics of the past few years has metastasized enough to cause clearly visible and widespread pain and suffering.
We know that the seven generations of smoking mothers since the 1950s have given birth to literally millions of damaged babies, and we know that these babies have grown up to disproportionately become substance abusers and addicts. The question is – how much of the human destruction we see on our streets can be traced to generations of pre-natal exposure to unregulated pesticides in cigarettes? I want to show you the published research and hard data that tie these ideas together.
Let’s connect a few dots.
1. We know that children who are exposed to pesticides during pre-birth development are at increased risk of developing both mental health and neurological problems in adolescence
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4247335
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8257888/
2. We know that children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at increased risk of developing MENTAL HEALTH problems in adolescence very similar to those exposed to pesticides during pre-birth development .
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34986370/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/204171
3. We know that children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at high risk of developing a very similar set of childhood and adolescent NEUROLOGICAL diseases to those children who are exposed to pesticides during pre-birth development .
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30172166/
https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(17)31290-5/fulltext
4. We know that children who are exposed to pesticides during pre-birth development are at high risk of developing substance abuse problems in adolescence.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34848208/
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-021-00822-y
5. We know that substance abuse, mental health problems, and neurological disease are co-occurring health issues for millions of people throughout life.
6. We know that a large proportion of people who develop SUD in adolescence and early adulthood have pre-existing mental health problems and neurological disease – meaning that they arose during the person’s pre-birth development and childhood.
https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/genetics-epigenetics-addiction
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3058719/
Keeping these pieces of peer-reviewed, published evidence in mind, here are the pesticides detected in tests conducted in late 2018 for my book Smoke No Evil.
Complementing the “Smoke No Evil” data, these 2022 data are from the first peer-reviewed, published research on pesticide residues in cigarettes since the mid-1970s. No child of any smoking mother anywhere in the world will be spared exposure during their pre-birth development.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08958378.2022.2037791
If pesticides in cigarettes are a contributing cause of substance abuse and addiction, then wouldn’t it make sense to ban the presence of pesticides in tobacco and cannabis completely? Can’t be done, some might say, but I would say take a look at the left hand column in the data. Organic tobacco products can definitely be done, and quite profitably too, and organic cannabis has been the natural way of responsible growers for generations until corporate cannabis came along.
There is no reason other than easier profit for pesticides to be used in growing anything that people are going to be inhaling. When pesticides come in food our bodies can depend on our liver to act as a powerful detoxifying organ, but our lungs simply take in the pesticides and pass them into the blood, which distributes them throughout the body. Many of the pesticides you see above are especially adept at crossing the placental barrier.
I believe that the addiction we are seeing on our streets and also the addiction hidden from view is at least in part a simple and direct result of the fact that the mothers of these addicted people smoked and therefore they inhaled pesticides every day during pregnancy. If the data on pesticides in tobacco products had not been totally absent from scientific, medical and public view for the past 50 years, what might be the situation today? Could access to this information have changed any minds about smoking during pregnancy?
So, given the evidence, what do you think needs to be done?
panaceachronicles 