According to Cascadeaids.org LGBTQ youth and adults in Oregon use tobacco at a 40% higher rate than heterosexuals, among the highest usage of any community, and have much higher rates of many devastating diseases. Everyone knows there’s a connection, but nobody has been able to figure it out. We’ve found what we think is solid new laboratory-verified evidence (data tables are below) and if we’re right, the path is wide open to a simple, elegant at least partial local-level solution that can start improving health and saving lives virtually overnight.
Our new research offers hard evidence (below) that there are hidden supertoxic chemicals in tobacco products that we believe are behind much of the elevated rates of specific diseases among LGBTQ youth and adults.
That’s because what they are smoking is heavily but invisibly contaminated with hidden supertoxic chemicals that target and attack immune systems and endocrine systems and other body systems and functions in people who are already especially vulnerable. Our research has just uncovered the existence of these contaminants for the first time ever in the US.
Here are some of the results of these hidden toxins in tobacco, and some of the smoking-related diseases with higher LGBTQ community rates that nobody can explain.
Smoking rates are 40% higher and …..
1. A 28% greater proportion of Oregon lesbians suffer from obesity.
2. Oregon lesbians also have elevated risk of breast cancer versus heterosexual women.
3. Oregon LGB adults are 50% more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, relative to heterosexuals.
4. Gay Oregon men are at enhanced risk of prostate, testicular and colon cancers.
5. A 20% greater proportion of Oregon LGBTQ adults report living with arthritis, diabetes, asthma or heart disease.
All these diseases related to the fact that LGBTQ people smoke more. Up until now the reason for that has been a total mystery, because nobody knew about the endocrine-disrupting pesticides that contaminate the cheapest tobacco products – the kind smoked by economically marginalized LGBTQ youth. We just did the first research ever here in Portland in December 2018 and the hard data below is evidence of what the Portland LGBTQ communities are inhaling without having a clue.
Here’s why the those higher rates of smoking and the endocrine disruptors and fungicides in them are linked to the higher rates of cancer and other diseases.
Each of the tobacco pesticide contaminants shown below, and many of the combinations, are linked to specific diseases. LGBTQ people smoke 40% more pesticide contaminated tobacco products, and they get more of these diseases.
But it is not necessary to prove what part of these diseases smoking tobacco itself may be causing, not only because that isn’t actually known, but simply extensive peer-reviewed journal studies prove that these specific contaminants of specific tobacco brands do cause these specific diseases.
And by the way, I am only showing the data for three brands here. We have just generated this and other data through testing off-the-shelf tobacco products in Portland, Oregon in December, 2018 and we are planning our next run now.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
There is a simple solution to totally eliminating these added risks. Think of clean needle programs. We recognize that IV drug users are exposed to terrible added harm by using dirty needles and we supply them with clean needles to reduce the harm they are doing to themselves. We don’t condone IV drug use, or encourage it, but we recognize that people are doing it and won’t or can’t stop, so we reduce the damage as much as possible.
We can and should do the same with tobacco use, which when you look at the substances being injected into users bodies through the smokestream are every bit as harmful to smokers as diseased needles are to IV drug users. I am talking with clinics serving Portland’s marginalized communities with major smoking and health issues connected with specific diseases like HIV/AIDS and discussing how easy it would be for them to begin a program of supplying their patients who smoke with organic tobacco, either hand-rolled by volunteers from organic leaf bought online or just using pre-packaged organic RYO organic tobacco.
Organic tobacco can be bought for as little as $10/pound from reputable suppliers, and can be easily hand-processed by volunteers into cigarettes that any smoker will readily and even happily accept once they have tried them in comparison to any brand they’re now smoking. Natural flavorings can also be added if there is a need for mint or other familiar tobacco product flavors.
What I’m advocating is a volunteer organization that works with clinics in marginalized communities to supply organic cigarettes as a first step in weaning smokers off of contaminated tobacco products, then transitioning them into a smoking cessation program that actually deals with tobacco addiction rather than the disguised impact of pesticides and fungicides.
The cost of distributing free organic tobacco in an HIV/AIDS program, or any other kind of community-based health program would be minimal, especially compared to the social and economic value of the potential outcomes.
ADDITIONAL RELEVANT POSTS
Hidden Causes Of HIV/AIDS Treatment Failure
The Korean Genome + Smoking + (DDT) = Diabetes Epidemic
Did Mom Give You Testicular Cancer?
Ancestral DDT Exposure & Trans-generational Obesity
Smoking & Breast Cancer – A New Link?
Little Cigars And High Liver Cancer Rates In Marginalized Communities
Sweet Cheap Poison At The Bodega
Prostate Cancer & Tobacco Pesticides: Hidden Links
Obesity & Obesogens: The Tobacco Connection
Tobacco Pesticides & Childhood Leukemia
Tobacco Road – Brazilian Tobacco, Nerve Agents, and American Cigarettes
DDT, Little Cigars, & Dropouts
Dude! That Shit’s Shrinking Your Balls!
Do You Want To Make Little Cigars Illegal In Your Community?
Smoking & Health – Fake Science Kills
A Community-Level Tobacco Control Strategy
Tobacco Product Risk Reduction
Stop IQOS From Vaporizing The Lives Of Millions
Just Incidental genocide
Organic Tobacco Is Safer Tobacco & Here’s Why
