It’s critical that we re-define the threat to HIV/AIDS patients who can’t quit smoking. We want to share new lab data that shows clearly that the threat from smoking during HIV/AIDS therapy is much worse and much different from anything previously imagined. However, this newly-defined threat to patients may also be 100% preventable by a simple, inexpensive volunteer-run program along the lines of well-accepted and effective needle exchange and condom distribution programs.
New hard data from lab tests we just ran on popular cigarette brands clearly identify a hidden causal factor in the well-documented failure of HIV/AIDS treatment in cases where heavy smoking is involved. This hidden, completely unaccounted-for factor is a cocktail of unregulated fungicides that contaminate every popular tobacco product, and these fungicides interact very negatively with almost every medication used in HIV/AIDS therapies.
Fungus infections are a severe, sometimes nearly intractable HIV/AIDS problem, and Azole-class fungicides are among the most-used in treatment. However, HIV/AIDS healers are very aware that Azole fungicides have serious, sometime severe interactions with many other medications that need to be used. Therefore, cross-exposure is carefully managed.
Hidden Azole-class fungicides in the tobacco brands that patients continue to smoke through treatment are feeding multiple Azole fungicides into their system with every puff. Interactions with their other meds must run wild, and surely nobody can explain them because nobody knows about which fungicides are in the tobacco brand the patient is smoking, or even that this problem exists.
As you can see in the table below, every brand we tested had high concentrations of fungicides, including azole-class fungicides. Note that even the relatively clean American Spirit Blue shows significant contamination, while the Marlboro Reds and Swisher Sweets are very heavily contaminated with multiple fungicides. We tested other brands – these three are quite representative of how the range of contamination correlates with price, meaning that economically marginalized people receive the highest doses of endocrine disrupting chemicals in their smoke. Many of the most difficult HIV/AIDS patients are also economically marginalized and depend on the cheapest tobacco brands, which are the most heavily contaminated with hidden fungicides.
And of course, a young impoverished lifetime of inhaling these immune and endocrine system disrupting chemicals in cheap flavored tobacco products may well have lowered the threshold of vulnerability in HIV/AIDS victims in the first place.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
People are very likely dying unnecessarily today because of this specific preventable issue, contamination of tobacco products with toxic fungicides that conflict with or cancel their HIV/AIDS therapy. The impact of this hidden toxic cocktail on the chemicals being used in therapy, as well as on the patient’s own organs and endocrine system, are probably what generates the devastation that is seen in these xenobiotic chemical victims. That said, we can’t overlook the separate and equally devastating impacts of DDT, Carbendazim, and other endocrine-disruptors in tobacco products, but this post will focus just on the fungicides.
THE PROBLEM: SUMMARY
We know that even while in therapy, and causing failure of the therapy
Hidden Azole fungicides in tobacco products are a major risk factor in the high rates of failure of HIV/AIDS therapy among smokers.
SIMPLE, INEXPENSIVE, & PROBABLY VERY EFFECTIVE
HIV/AIDS clinics can implement the solution to this tragedy without needing to address or solve the problem of contaminated tobacco.
I believe that a community-based organic tobacco replacement program would turn out to be the most effective smoking-related disease mitigation approach ever implemented. But that’s for later. Just like a needle exchange. Turn in your contaminated tobacco products; receive organic smokes in return. The present cost would be a fraction of one percent of the future avoided costs, not to mention the avoided suffering and death.
The program can be a simple as buying organic cigarettes and distributing them, or as much fun as buying whole organic tobacco leaf and having rolling parties. Hand-rolling parties using organic tobacco leaf would offer a great participatory opportunity for raising awareness and encouraging patients to help themselves and educate others. These organic smokes can be handed out just the way medications, needles, condoms, vitamins and other necessities, hand out the these uncontaminated hand-rolled cigarettes along with medication and do some awareness-raising of why this is so important.
I realize that the perfect solution would be to find a way to empower victims to stop smoking completely, and this may be a path to that outcome for some. But for those who must for whatever reason keep smoking, at least they won’t be inhaling a cocktail of therapy-negating Azole fungicides and immune-system disruptors like Carbendazim and DDT.
For members of the LGBTQ communities who are currently smoking but do not have HIV/AIDS, this awareness could be a future life-saver. Seeing what their brothers and sisters are going through and knowing why will be a huge incentive for HIV/AIDS patients who have turned their therapy around by eliminating the fungicide-contaminated tobacco products can share that experience more effectively than any program ever designed.
I’ll be happy to help clinics access dependable low-cost supplies of every kind organic tobacco from cigarettes to RYO to whole organic leaf, and also to set up a testing program using qualified labs so that they and their patients, or any member of the community, can know exactly what is any tobacco brand. billdrake4470@gmail.com
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