As of 2011 Federal law (cited below) specifically forbids tobacco manufacturers from using pesticide contaminated tobaccothat exceeds US pesticide residue standards for domestic tobacco whether that tobacco is domestic or imported. Every tobacco company, US and international, is in gross, reckless and conspiratorial violation of this law.
The law has been on the books since 2011 but apparently nobody at FDA is testing, reporting, or investigating anything. I looked hard and saw zero evidence of concern but who knows, maybe I missed something.
Since I couldn’t find any evidence that FDA was doing its job, or get any response from them when I asked, I just paid for the lab tests that FDA should be doing and am publishing data below showing that every brand we tested violates 907(a)(1)(B) of Section 907 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. These products we tested and reported to FDA in January 2019 (“Potential Tobacco Violation Report ID 19C00160“) should be re-tested on a national scale and if they are in violation they should be withdrawn and the manufacturers subjected at least to fines. I am of course holding my breath.
Here’s the core language of the Federal statute which along with the accompanying language gives any health authority at any level powers to act immediately in protection of public health and safety.
907(a)(1)(B) of Section 907 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act: (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.”
Here is violation of the law.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
The law means no DDT (zero tolerance under US law), no Carbendazim (zero tolerance under US law), and none of about 13 others just in the little sample of tobacco products we sampled in December 2018. The tobacco material in at least one of the products – Swisher Sweets – violates this law multiple times with contaminants that are a clear and present danger to public health.
The Feds know what the industry is doing, because they wrote this law forbidding it. But they have never published one single test or as far as I can ell conducted one inspection, which means that since 2011 they haven’t prevented one single child from inhaling DDT from a Swisher Sweet their older friends bought at the bodega.
By imposing reasonable pesticide regulations based on existing, effective Cannabis pesticide limits in Oregon and other states, millions of smokers could be protected from exposure to pesticide residues in tobacco products (shown below) that are strongly associated with or in some cases proven to cause breast cancer, testicular cancer, obesity, diabetes, prostate cancer, liver cancer, childhood leukemia (ALL), atrophied testicles, compromised immunity and ruined HIV/AIDS treatments. And there’s more, but I hope this awful list of preventable slaughter is enough to demand that 907(a)(1)(B) of Section 907 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act: (B) ADDITIONAL SPECIAL RULE. be enforced. Here is the full data
Tobacco Product Pesticide ResidueTest Sample #1: 12/15/2018Community Tobacco Control Partnersbilldrake4470@gmail.com
The Tobacco companies aren’t deliberately mass murderers. They do maim and kill genocidal levels of people every single year, but that’s just as a byproduct of their business decisions. They don’t actually intend to have their customers sicken and die- it’s just so damned profitable to use stuff like DDT instead of labor to grow tobacco.
They do know that it’s the DDT and other xenobiotic chemicals they use in the fields, invisible to everyone, that are actually killing most of the people dying of “smoking-related disease.” They’ve spent huge amounts of money to keep that particular little piece of information top secret even though it’s been in plain view for fifty years. That has been quite a trick, but they have managed to pull it off pretty well so far. However, bad news is coming for the so-called “Tobacco” industry. All it’s going to take is one well-informed class-action lawsuit based solidly on injury by preventable pesticide contamination and this whole nasty conspiracy will finally come crashing down.
The thing is, these murderous companies don’t actually want to kill off their customers, although because they know that they do, they spend lots of money creating large numbers of what they call “replacement smokers” every year. They spend vast sums advertising heavily to kids worldwide, making cheap fruity sweet tobacco products readily available and now packaging straight nicotine in glycerin for vaping just to give kids a taste of the real thing. And those cute little replacement smokers just keep lining up.
Oh, and those small farmers in remote areas that work like slaves for the Tobacco companies and apply all those chemicals that should be labeled “severe hazard – inhalation”, but aren’t? There aren’t any labels on the 55 gallon drums of pesticide that the tobacco company agent drives up and hands to the farmers and says – “spray this tonight”. They aren’t complaining because if they do they won’t get their tobacco allotment next time and their families will starve, plain and simple. Yes everybody is always sick, and they have lost a few babies to disease, but they have to eat. So it’s really just business all up and down the line. Except that a lot of people seem to be dying at every step.
Even fifty years after global governments first banned DDT, and with every health agency in the world classifying it as an extreme hazard, the Tobacco companies are still forcing illiterate farmers in remote Tobacco-growing regions to drench the Tobacco crops with it. Why do this? Because if you use enough DDT all you need is one peasant with a tank on his back walking through the field killing all the bugs and worms with chemicals rather than twenty men, women and children working that same field, taking care of the tobacco using the old ways, and earning at least something of a wage, and not being drenched with DDT drift day and night.
Oh sure, the global tobacco industry could pay people to work the tobacco fields by hand and maybe even pay them a decent wage. Then tobacco products would be more expensive, which of course is exactly what American health authorities think is the only way to get people to cut down, quit or never start. You would think that everyone would get behind organic tobacco because it would be much more expensive, but that would mean more profits for the tobacco industry and not more taxes for the bureaucrats so of course that isn’t an appealing tobacco control strategy.
“We believe that making tobacco products more expensive reduces smoking, and it is a primary strategy for control and prevention. But, we don’t want to make tobacco more expensive by requiring that it be organic or at least meet reasonable pesticide residue standards, we want to leave outrageously dangerous pesticide contaminated tobacco alone and just make it more expensive using taxation. Our job isn’t to protect people – it’s to preach at them and take away their money so they can’t do bad things with it.”
Tobacco has always been an extremely profitable crop, but a very tough crop to farm. The problem is that bugs love tobacco more than just about any other plant. Tobacco is so high in both sugars and very rich protein that every kind of bug, animal and worm in nature loves to eat those incredibly valuable tobacco leaves. So, for centuries growing tobacco meant prodigious hand labor in the tobacco fields day and night (by guess who), along with great wealth (owned by guess who) that built the American society. But that tobacco wealth wasn’t an industry until agricultural chemicals came along, and then tobacco was one of the earliest and strongest adopters of pesticides.
With the chemical revolution came highly effective Organochlorine pesticides that sprang directly from WWII Nazi poison gas experiments, and virtually overnight the tobacco companies switched from human labor in America to ever-diversifying chemical “crop protection agents” in the Third World that let them grow tobacco at a fraction of the cost of human labor, increasing their already insane profits even more. The difference in profit between growing tobacco using hand labor and using chemicals is what has made the tobacco industry rich beyond imagination since 1950, and they’ve used that wealth to make sure that no government gets in the way of their use of those extremely profitable chemicals.
As a result, chemical contaminants that are totally banned on any other consumable product are not regulated at all on tobacco, and the tobacco industry is continually coming up with new exotic chemicals to use on their fields of GM tobacco and all those chemicals are winding up in the lungs of poor smokers and vapers.
The anti-tobacco crusaders have been raising taxes for years, showing studies that prove when tobacco products get more expensive, people smoke less. We’ve got a winner folks – increase prices. That finances a huge bureaucracy that can then run around and invent a lot of ways to justify its existence by “educating” people. They can all have comfy salaries and a “sense of mission”, spending all that easy-come tax money on themselves so that they can “educate” and “persuade” people. They can’t actually”protect” people of course, because the tobacco industry has tied these well-meaning but also self-satisfied and very comfortable health bureaucrats up in very subtle legislative knots to where they actually say that they can’t regulate pesticides in tobacco products and then in the next breath play CYA by saying, with complete sincerity, “We believe that tobacco is so bad that there is no need to focus on pesticide residues.”
Of course, if you DID focus on the pesticide residues, then you would HAVE to do something about tobacco products – like regulate them for example.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
The pesticide residues that contaminate tobacco products are simply the incidental result of crop management decisions the industry makes every day. Since these giant international companies grow most of their tobacco in remote parts of the world, out of sight of any regulators who can’t be easily managed with a few dollars they are free to use the most effective crop chemicals available on their Tobacco crops, which means using chemicals that are so toxic to living things (xenobiotics) that they are banned in every place where regulations matter. There is plenty of DDT and other banned pesticides available anywhere in the world outside of the tightly regulated countries, where almost all of the tobacco is grown for US consumption.
The problem with pesticide contamination of Tobacco products is that the Tobacco companies have arranged legislation in the US so that all that health departments can do is “encourage” people to stop smoking and ‘discourage’ them from starting, but they can’t actually touch the tobacco products themselves because they are protected by a core assumption that has cost the Tobacco companies billions to put in place. That core assumption is that Tobacco itself is so bad that nothing else matters. All I have to say is – who benefits from that assumption? Only the Tobacco industry.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Heavy concentrations of pesticide residues in cheap tobacco products being smoked by mothers, fathers or others in the household are likely to be a factor in the high rates of childhood Leukemia (ALL) among Hispanic and Native American children.
I believe these hidden, unregulated pesticides will prove to be a major factor in childhood cancer, once their presence and nature is recognized. It will be seen that simply controlling the most hazardous pesticide residues in tobacco products by imposing reasonable standards on manufacturers could lower the incidence of childhood cancer and many other diseases, perhaps dramatically, especially in the most genetically vulnerable groups of people.
The reasons the link between tobacco pesticide contaminants and childhood leukemia remains obscure are:
While the link between pesticide exposure of the fetus and development of childhood Leukemia (ALL) is proven, and;
While parental smoking and childhood Leukemia are strongly associated, and;
While Hispanic and Native American children are proven to have higher rates of ALL and;
While marginalized young people are known to be the heaviest consumers of the most heavily contaminated brands, nevertheless;
Nobody seems to know that tobacco products, and particularly those smoked and preferred by young Hispanics and Native Americans, are heavily contaminated with some of precisely the pesticides that are known to cause ALL, and;
Although researchers say that they can see clearly that pesticides, smoking and ALL are linked, they can’t explain the connections because;
There has never been any reference research published showing pesticide contamination of tobacco products, until our little study, and;
Researchers almost never have any reality-based background knowledge of tobacco industry practices to guide their research objectives
Here is what researchers know about Childhood Leukemia that is relevant to tobacco pesticide contamination (journal citations are below the narrative).
In addition to Hispanic and Native American children having higher rates of childhood leukemia (ALL) than other groups, research shows that children with at least 10% Native American ancestry have 59% higher relapse rates after being “cured” of ALL the first time.
Childhood Leukemia is known to be initiated by specific pesticide exposure at specific points in fetal development. There are other causes, but the wrong kind of pesticide exposure at exactly the wrong fetal developmental point initiates genetic processes leading directly to childhood Leukemia.
The relationship between fetal pesticide exposure and increased likelihood of childhood Leukemia in Hispanic and Native American children is proven. The multiple causes of ALL are not clear to researchers, but the associations with pesticides are strong.
Here’s what we want to contribute to the discussion.
We believe that our new data on pesticide contamination of tobacco products offers a novel and powerful even if partial explanation for the association between parental smoking and childhood Leukemia in Hispanic, Native American and other vulnerable populations.
The pesticides that we identified contaminating tobacco products marketed to and smoked by poor, young non-white people included multiple heavy concentrations of specific pesticides that are known to initiate childhood leukemia disproportionately in Hispanic and Native American babies. We refer specifically to Carbendazim and DDT.
A significant proportion of young, low-income Hispanics and Native Americans smoke little cigars, and because this is a very heavily contaminated tobacco product category, their children are exposed beginning with conception to xenobiotics that are known pathways to childhood leukemia and that show particular virulence in Hispanic and Native American children. Little cigars are by no means the only pesticide-contaminated tobacco products – they are simply the most contaminated of any that we have been able to test so far.
Because childhood Leukemia is known to initiate its growth at specific developmental stages, chronic smoking of tobacco products containing high concentrations of pesticides by the pregnant mother, or by anyone in the household, guarantees that xenobiotics will be present at every critical point for the initiation of development of childhood Leukemia in the growing child.
Since pesticide exposure levels required for initiation of disease processes during fetal development can be very low, concentrations remaining in second-hand smoke might be sufficient to initiate these disease-inducing genetic changes in the fetus even when the pregnant woman does not smoke.
But it’s not just pregnant mothers and smoking family members who give babies Leukemia. A new relationship has just been established between smoking by Hispanic fathers and leukemia in their children.
Pesticide contamination of the products that young Hispanic fathers are smoking appears to be a novel, powerful and unrecognized connection between their smoking and childhood Leukemia in their children. These findings are further reinforced by recent findings of paternal smoking influence in childhood Leukemia in a non-Hispanic White Australian population. It is therefore highly likely that this link applies to Native American fathers as well.
See for yourself what the research says. Here are some of the core research articles that I believe support a clear link between contaminated tobacco products and childhood Leukemia.
“Linking Pesticide Exposure with Pediatric Leukemia: Potential Underlying Mechanisms”
Leukemia is the most common cancer in children, representing 30% of all childhood cancers. The disease arises from recurrent genetic insults that block differentiation of hematopoietic stem and/or progenitor cells (HSPCs) and drives uncontrolled proliferation and survival of the differentiation-blocked clone. Pediatric leukemia is phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous with an obscure etiology.
The interaction between genetic factors and environmental agents represents a potential etiological driver. Although information is limited, the principal toxic mechanisms of potential leukemogenic agents (e.g., etoposide, benzene metabolites, bioflavonoids and some pesticides) include topoisomerase II inhibition and/or excessive generation of free radicals, which may induce DNA single- and double-strand breaks (DNA-DSBs) in early HSPCs.
Chromosomal rearrangements (duplications, deletions and translocations) may occur if these lesions are not properly repaired.
The initiating hit usually occurs in utero and commonly leads to the expression of oncogenic fusion proteins. Subsequent cooperating hits define the disease latency and occur after birth and may be of a genetic, epigenetic or immune nature (i.e., delayed infection-mediated immune deregulation).
Here, we review the available experimental and epidemiological evidence linking pesticide exposure to infant and childhood leukemia and provide a mechanistic basis to support the association, focusing on early initiating molecular events.”
“Paternal smoking and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia: systematic review and meta-analysis”
To investigate the association between paternal smoking and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
METHOD:
We identified 18 published epidemiologic studies that reported data on both paternal smoking and childhood ALL risk. We performed a meta-analysis and analyzed dose-response relationships on ALL risk for smoking during preconception, during pregnancy, after birth, and ever smoking.
RESULTS:
The summary odds ratio (OR) of childhood ALL associated with paternal smoking was 1.11 (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.05-1.18, I(2) = 18%) during any time period, 1.25 (95% CI: 1.08-1.46, I(2) = 53%) preconception; 1.24 (95% CI: 1.07-1.43, I(2) = 54%) during pregnancy, and 1.24 (95% CI: 0.96-1.60, I(2) = 64%) after birth, with a dose-response relationship between childhood ALL and paternal smoking preconception or after birth.
CONCLUSION:
The evidence supports a positive association between childhood ALL and paternal ever smoking and at each exposure time period examined. Future epidemiologic studies should assess paternal smoking during well-defined exposure windows and should include biomarkers to assess smoking exposure and toxicological mechanisms.
“Correlates of Prenatal and Early-Life Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Frequency of Common Gene Deletions in Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia”
“In summary, we provide evidence that increased tobacco smoke exposure increases the generation of somatic ALL-associated driver deletions. To our knowledge, this is also the first reported application of an epigenetic biomarker to assess the effects of an environmental exposure on leukemogenic alterations.”
“Our findings should be added to an already compelling list of reasons for minimizing the prenatal and early life tobacco smoke exposure of children.”
“Childhood Leukemia Incidence in California: High and Rising in the Hispanic Population”
“Ethnic disparities in children’s exposure to chemicals at home, as well as ethnic disparities in their parents’ exposures to chemicals at work, may contribute to the higher burden of childhood leukemia in Hispanic children.
A more complete evaluation of the role of specific environmental factors that disproportionally affect the Hispanic community in the increased risk of leukemia in Hispanic children is warranted.”
“Native American ancestry linked to greater risk of relapse in young leukemia patients”
The study found that ALL cancer was 59 percent more likely to return in patients whose genetic makeup reflected at least 10 percent Native American ancestry.
Investigators also found ALL patients with greater Native American ancestry who received additional chemotherapy as part of a COG clinical trial benefited more from the extra treatment than other children.
“In utero pesticides exposure and generation of acute myeloid leukemia associated translocation (8;21)”
“The present study was set to detect t (8;21) translocation in umbilical cord blood samples from neonates as in utero primary molecular hit in the pathway of childhood leukemia in apparently healthy neonates and to delineate the relationship between generation of this translocation and prenatal pesticide exposure.
Four pesticides were studied including Malathion and Diazinon as organophosphates, and DDT and Lindane as organochlorines. The choice of these four pesticides was based on their popular use in the community under investigation and their well-established role in cancer pathology.”
“Of the studied pesticides, DDT was accompanied by highest risk for carrying the fusion Oncogene [OR 3.55 (95%CI 1.53-8.26), P=0.003].”
“Since pediatric leukemia involves both genetics and environmental interactions, pesticides provide a perfect link in such regard. In this relatively large study we report on a direct relation of prenatal Malathion and DDT exposure and the incidence of leukemia translocation in neonates.”
“To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first study to evaluate the effect of pesticides on acquiring AML fusion Oncogene in Egypt, where the analyzed Xenobiotics are still used and not banned yet.” (Published November 28, 2016)
“In Utero Pesticide Exposure and Leukemia in Brazilian Children < 2 Years of Age”
“Our findings suggest that children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides 3 months before conception were at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with ALL in the first year of life compared with those whose mothers did not report such exposure.
Adjusted ORs for AML in the first year of life ranged from 2.75 (95% CI: 0.96, 7.92) for any pesticide exposure in the first trimester of pregnancy, to 7.04 (95% CI: 2.47, 20.10) for exposure during breastfeeding.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 15 studies of the association between residential exposure to pesticides during selected time windows (preconception, pregnancy, and childhood) and childhood leukemia carried out during 1950–2009. (Turner et al. 2010) reported associations with pregnancy exposure to unspecified pesticides (OR = 1.54; 95% CI: 1.13, 2.11), insecticides (OR = 2.05; 95% CI: 1.80, 2.32), and herbicides (OR = 1.61; 95% CI: 1.20, 2.16).
Another meta-analysis of 31 studies of parental occupational exposure to pesticides and childhood leukemia (Wigle et al. 2009) reported associations with occupational exposure to insecticides (OR = 2.72; 95% CI: 1.47, 5.04) and herbicides (OR = 3.62; 95% CI: 1.28, 10.3) during pregnancy.
A French study also examined the association between pesticide exposure and infant leukemia (Rudant et al. 2007). According to use of any pesticide, the observed risk estimates (ORs) were 2.3 (95% CI: 1.9, 2.8) for ALL and 2.2 (95% CI: 1.4, 3.3) for AML. These authors also suggested that a domestic use of pesticides may play a role in the etiology of leukemia, and that prenatal exposure may be a window of fetal vulnerability.
Incidence rates of childhood leukemia in the United States have steadily increased over the last several decades, but only recently have disparities in the increase in incidence been recognized.
“Trends in Childhood Leukemia Incidence Over Two Decades from 1992–2013”
In the current analysis, Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) data were used to evaluate recent trends in the incidence of childhood leukemia diagnosed at age 0–19 years from 1992–2013, overall and by age, race/ethnicity, gender, and histologic subtype. Hispanic White children were more likely than non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black or non-Hispanic Asian children to be diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) from 2009–2013.
From 1992–2013, a significant increase in ALL incidence was observed for Hispanic White children (annual percent change (APC)Hispanic=1.08, 95%CI:0.59, 1.58); no significant increase was observed for non-Hispanic White, Black or Asian children.
ALL incidence increased by about 3% per year from 1992–2013 for Hispanic White children diagnosed from 15–19 years (APC=2.67; 95%CI:0.88, 4.49), and by 2% for those 10–14 years (APC=2.09; 95%CI:0.57, 3.63), while no significant increases in incidence were observed in non-Hispanic White, Black, or Asian children of the same age.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) incidence increased among non-Hispanic White children under 1 year at diagnosis, and among Hispanic White children diagnosed at age 1–4. The increase in incidence rates of childhood ALL appears to be driven by rising rates in older Hispanic children (10–14, and 15–19 years).
More bad news. It looks like we should be concerned about pesticides in tobacco products and childhood brain cancer.
Environ Health Perspect. 2009 Jun; 117(6): 1002–1006.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
I’m getting more than a little tired of hearing the too-clever bullshit from self-serving agencies like FDA and from anti-smoking hustlers like Truth Initiative claiming that organic cigarettes aren’t safer than regular commercial cigarettes because all tobacco is equally hazardous. That’s either a deliberate lie or gross ignorance. They either actually know nothing about the tobacco industry, although they claim to be unimpeachable experts, or they know about the true impact of pesticide contaminants in tobacco products and are in effect co-conspirators in this atrocity.
After all, government at all levels and “non-profit” parasites like Truth Initiative are full partners in the revenues generated by tobacco products, and they have every reason to conceal the fact that they know that pesticides are a major, even primary and 100% preventable cause of smoking-related disease and death. The only reason pesticide residues are in tobacco products at all is because it is much more profitable to produce them that way than to make them cleaner and safer, and the only reason that nobody has called them on this atrocity is because they have spread so much money around in so many places for so many years. If you want to identify tobacco industry dupes or co-conspirators just look for the ones claiming that all tobacco is equally hazardous, organic American Spirit and Swisher Sweets alike.
An Oregon non-profit I started last year just finished testing five brands of tobacco products for pesticide residues, and we found hard evidence of extreme differences between the safety levels of organic tobacco and off-the-shelf mini-mart tobacco products regardless of what you may think about tobacco itself.
What you see above is the first-ever hard data on pesticide residues in regular, commercial tobacco products. See any differences between brands? By the way, what you don’t see here is American Spirit Organic because we tested that and found exactly ZERO pesticide residues.
So please tell me – are there any differences here?
Is the least contaminated tobacco product safer than the most contaminated one, or not?
Even if you assume that the tobacco in all three brands is the same, which it isn’t, would you say there are differences in safety levels, or not?
If someone you love is smoking and you can’t get them to stop, which of the three brands above would you want them to smoke, and why?
If your kid is sneaking off and smoking, which of these brands would you least want them to be smoking, and why?
Looking at that hard data, only blind arrogance or a hidden agenda could continue to claim that the DDT, Carbendazim and Penconazole residues in the little cigars that kids are smoking right now, today doesn’t matter because tobacco itself is so bad anyway. Yet that is exactly what EPA, FDA, all the anti-smoking groups, and all the state health departments pretend to believe. That’s their excuse for doing nothing, and it’s pathetic. Here’s why.
Alcohol products are “so bad anyway” and are certainly right up there with tobacco products in terms of the death, disease, personal and social costs and widespread suffering they cause, but you can bet that there would be an “all hands on deck” emergency alarm sent out if even a few of the pesticides we just found in tobacco products were found in beer or wine down at the mini-mart. That contaminated shit would be pulled from the coolers instantly, and there would be lawsuits and congressional investigations. There would be no shrugging of shoulders and saying what the hell, alcohol is so bad for people anyway that a few pesticides don’t matter.
That may be harsh, but this level of self-serving deceitfulness while enormous numbers of people die from pesticide contaminated tobacco products every year, and while children around the world are sealing their future fates by being lured into smoking these cheap contaminated tobacco products, all of which is 100% preventable, is beyond disgusting.
We ran our tests on off-the-shelf tobacco products from local mini-marts – exactly what the kids buy and where they buy them. The question we asked ourselves after looking at the results is – if it were possible, wouldn’t the kids smoking this trash, idiots that they certainly are, be safer smoking these products if they were exactly the same crap as they are now but weren’t additionally contaminated with the extremely hazardous pesticides?
We know that 1 in 13 of all the children under 17 alive today will die prematurely, painfully and expensively of “smoking-related” disease. That is a whole lot of children and future suffering. Do you think any of it could be prevented just by requiring tobacco manufacturers to remove pesticide residues from their tobacco?
They could do that, almost in a flash. Why don’t they? Because they don’t have to, and because it’s much more profitable to use chemicals than to use labor, even in the remote areas of the Third World where they grow their tobacco out of sight of regulators and inspectors.
The fact is that millions of future deaths can very likely be prevented by acting now to set reasonable standards for pesticide residues in tobacco products. Those standards exist – simply look at Oregon’s pesticide residue “Action Levels” for Cannabis, or the FDA’s own “Action Levels” for DDT in everything but tobacco. Everything.
Every tobacco product on the market could be made with organic tobacco – no problem. Give the industry 3-5 years and a drop-dead set of conditions and they will do whatever they have to do. It would take longer to actually become organic, but in 3-5 years the world tobacco supply could be 75% cleared of pesticide residues.
However as long as “players” like FDA and Truth Initiative and others like them play the “All Tobacco Is Equally Bad” game nothing will change. Of the total number of smokers dying each year, a significant number die because of the arrogant conceit of those who believe (or at least pretend to believe) they know all the truth there is to know about Tobacco when they have never once set foot in any tobacco field anywhere, much less a field that has just been sprayed with DDT in Nicaragua or Brazil.
And then in 2015 the moralists and parasites had the nerve to go after organic tobacco. The problem is that they apparently don’t know what Tobacco is, or really that much about it, because if they did they wouldn’t have gotten themselves into the really stupid trap of insisting for the record that there’s no difference between organic tobacco and severely contaminated tobacco. They may claim when finally confronted that they don’t know about all those pesticides, but they are on the record as fully informed.
Of course if they did admit they have known about the pesticides all along then they would also have to admit culpability in 50 years of countless deaths and measureless suffering that could have been completely prevented by insisting on reasonable regulations on pesticide residues in tobacco products. The problem of organochlorine pesticides in heavy concentrations in tobacco products was first realized in the 1950’s, and was heavily documented through the 1960’s. There was testimony before the Senate calling specific attention to the problem. That issue quickly died in the US Senate of 1969.
Then in the 1970’s as smoking and health issues became a major public and scientific concern, the Tobacco industry realized it had a severe problem, and a nationwide lid was clamped on any research referring to pesticides in tobacco products. Research continued in other countries and has resulted in strict but reasonable laws regulating pesticide residues in tobacco products. But in the US beginning in the 1970’s what research couldn’t be directly corrupted or subtly misdirected was subverted through strategies like the “Reference Cigarette” program.
That’s quite a few years of preventable deaths that lie at the feet of those who have been so fixed on hating what they believed was Tobacco that they never once stopped to ask if it was actually Tobacco they were hating.
But then in 2015 they scored what they thought was a face-saving victory – they got RJR to go public and say the words – organic tobacco does not mean a safer cigarette. They finally got payback for years of feeling powerless in the face of the whole tobacco industry. unfortunately, we know that FDA was only able to force RJR to agree to their lies because RJR didn’t want to have to defend American Spirit organic by showing WHY American Spirit organic cigarettes are safer. They are safer because they aren’t drenched with pesticides like every other commercial tobacco brand, including every other RJR brand besides organic American Spirit.
Notice that in the data tables above even the regular American Spirit Blue non-organic brand is lower in pesticides than the Marlboro or another RJR brand, Camel. That’s a big difference in safety levels even among non-organic brands, much less between organic and non-organic. However, if RJR had defended American Spirit organic tobacco on that simple evidence-based premise then they would have had to admit how contaminated all their other products are, and why. Oops! That’s a non-starter. Think of the lawsuits!
So it was a much, much better deal for RJR to let FDA pretend they scored a big win, just like years before the Surgeon General’s warnings were a godsend to tobacco manufacturers. It let them say – hey, you were warned. The so-called “Tobacco Settlement” was an even bigger fraud – look at what is actually being done with all that money. Lots of “Tobacco is really really bad” advertising, lots of huge salaries and nice perks, everybody congratulating themselves on what a great job they’re doing, and no change in the numbers of people suffering and dying, or in the number of kids heading down that dead-end road.
Until my little non-profit finally got funding and was able to begin testing tobacco products a few months ago, not one dime has ever been spent by the “anti-tobacco” forces to test for these contaminants that by themselves make these products illegal, period. But then the “Tobacco is really really bad” game would be over, wouldn’t it. Imagine the public reaction if it became clear that people in positions of responsibility and authority had known about pesticide contamination of tobacco products for many smokers’ lifetimes and had never once spoken out.
FDA knows what it has to do in return for being allowed to look like a winner in the organic tobacco derby. Their part of the deal is not to make too much noise about all those “crop protection agents”. That’s what the industry calls pesticides. After all, crops need protection, right? so much better than a nasty word ending in “cide”.
FDA and the anti-tobacco PR and advertising shills are allowed to beat the drums and make up endless variations of the “Tobacco Is So Bad” meme because that doesn’t hurt the tobacco industry one bit, but it does allow thousands of people to keep doing extremely dubious work to justify their lucrative titles and careers “fighting tobacco”.
Ever wonder why FDA is being so helpful in the industry’s pivot away from tobacco and toward e-cigarettes? Are they are all hoping that their complicity in 50 years of slaughter for profit will just slide on out of sight? Yes, complicity. FDA has had institutional knowledge of the presence of heavy concentrations of hazardous pesticides in tobacco products for over 20 years and has not once, ever brought it up in any hearings or testimony or research. That’s complicity.
I call the tobacco industry’s reckless, negligent, criminal behavior “slaughter for profit” simply because the tobacco industry doesn’t have to use pesticides at all. Traditional tobacco growers used hand labor for hundreds of years and did just fine. The tobacco companies use chemicals in place of labor strictly for increased profits and they have rigged the regulatory systems of the world so that they are protected from the consequences of their greed-driven decisions.
No matter. I’m here to call bullshit right now with simple hard evidence. AKA facts. You decide.
Check the data below after you read the following incredible weasel-statements and then you tell me:
Are these bureaucrats full of shit or not?
Are some tobacco products safer than others, or not?
Should people who smoke be protected from these contaminants, or do they deserve whatever happens to them?
If these chemicals were in wine or beer, would that be OK just because alcohol is known to be so hazardous to health anyway.
Does it not matter that the most hazardous of these brands, the one with 375 times the highest background level of DDT, is the one that most kids 11-16 love?
“Because use of tobacco products, with or without pesticide residues, is so hazardous to health, all of the Oregon Health Authority’s efforts around tobacco are aimed at discouraging use of tobacco products and encouraging cessation of tobacco use in people already using it.” Oregon Health Authority 2018
“EPA does not assess intermediate or long-term risks of pesticide residues to smokers because of the severity of health effects linked to use of tobacco products themselves.” EPA 2018
“Organic,” “natural” or “additive-free” product labels may imply a healthier or safer choice, but that couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to tobacco products. A cigarette with organic tobacco or tobacco with no additives does not make it healthier or safer than other cigarettes.” Truth Initiative 2018
No differences at all? Really?
Notice the array of fungicides, marked in red. If you’re familiar with HIV/AIDS therapy, think what inhaling these fungicides is doing to patients. Think of what the worldwide effects on fungicide resistance will be from the exposure of millions of smokers to this fungicide cocktail. Concerned about fungal resistance? Look at tobacco products and consider how simple it would be to produce tobacco organically, or at least to some reasonable standards. And people really do have the right to know.
Pesticide Residue Test Sample #1 Multnomah County, Oregon Received 12/13/2018 from Columbia Food Labs/Pixis
billdrake4470@gmail.com
Oregon Cannabis Action Levels (PPM) – A Reasonable Standard
Here is a story is about an Australian oncologist who, dismayed at the damage that she saw “Tobacco” doing to her patients, was horrified to find out that her medical institution held “Tobacco” company stock as part of its investment portfolio.
Well, she set to work, she did, and although the gruff, cynical world of big money managers was skeptical at first, this plucky, photogenic Australian Oncologist has managed to create a very successful “Tobacco-free Portfolio” movement worldwide.
The article is chock full of feel-good quotes from financial wizards who were absolutely bowled over by the moral and ethical intensity of the Aussie doc’s arguments, and her ghastly photos of diseased lungs, and now they are 100% on board with her in shunning the “Tobacco” industry’s stocks in their portfolios.
The problem here is emblematic of the failure of anti-“tobacco” movements to even begin to identify who and what they need to be attacking. The core of the problem is that the industry has so completely propagandized people and institutions at all levels that most people actually believe that it is Tobacco killing all those people who die from smoking cigarettes.
While these movements and lawsuits and non-profit (sic) campaigns are all aimed at “Tobacco”, that plague-like carrier of the dreaded addictive nicotine toxin that destroys lives and stalks children, the industry slides right by because its products have almost nothing at all to do with Tobacco anymore. 100% of the attacks against the industry based on the assumption that its products are “Tobacco” are virtually meaningless and a complete waste of hope, energy, and money.
Almost all US cigarette brands are up to 100% recycled waste with nicotine added in precise dosages. Does anyone who reflects for even a few seconds believe that it would be possible to manufacture billions of cigarettes from natural plant material and be able to print the precise amount of tar and nicotine on every pack? The amount of nicotine varies so much from field to field, from plant to plant, and from leaf to leaf that even if they were using actual Tobacco leaf they couldn’t control the amount of “Nicotine & Tar” without doing some major processing.
The only way the industry can achieve uniformity is to produce a synthetic product, and in fact the industry does just that, by the millions of tons each year. The industry calls it “synthetic smoking materials” or, in a more colorful (and unconsciously accurate) industry term, “sheet tobacco”. That’s what it is – recycled waste processed into sheet of material that are then shaved, infused with precise amounts of hundreds of chemicals including nicotine, and then shaved into little curls and made into cigarettes. Anyone who knows the industry is laughing at the “Ammonia” lawsuit. Sure Ammonia is used in manufacturing “tobacco sheet” – huge amounts of it. But it isn’t “added” to the material, it’s used in a super-cooled process to puff it up after its been shaved into little curls so that it will look and smoke more like real leaf. The Ammonia is long-gone by the time those little ciggys are all packaged up and ready to be inhaled by some poor idiot who really is being deceived, manipulated, injured and murdered as a result of deliberate, profit-driven decisions of this industry.
If the 2016 US “Tobacco” industry were to be a startup industry with no history, and it came to even the highly-manipulated US regulators with the products it currently makes and proposed to make those products, they would not only be denied they would probably be arrested as terrorists.
But after many decades of very expensive and well-crafted propaganda, this industry now has even those who see it clearly as committing crimes against humanity led unknowingly to be aggrieved at “Tobacco” and to spend all their energy and resources attacking the “Tobacco industry”.
I’m afraid that for the most part anti-“Tobacco” people are useful idiots. They aren’t stupid, or foolish, or wrong in what they are trying to do. Bless them. However, they are being so effectively manipulated that they are the “Tobacco” industry’s most ardent defenders when it comes to anyone trying to point out the error of their “anti-Tobacco” ways.
In the 1980s I had written a four-part expose of the “Tobacco industry” at the request of a senior editor with the Nader organization, and just before that series was to begin publication, a senior member of Nader’s Board, a well-known “anti-Tobacco” physician, said (as my editor told me) that they had spent so many years convincing people that Tobacco was the worst possible thing for their health that they weren’t going to publish anything that might suggest that it might not be the Tobacco that’s the problem at all.
This industry is completely protected at the institutional/governmental level, and it seems that all of the “anti-Tobacco” movements in the world have also been effectively co-opted.
This industry has been earning more real wealth than any other tightly-held industry in the world for generations and that wealth has gone into ownership of hundreds of companies in every industry and every financial sector in the world. So as sincere and well-motivated as our Australian Oncologist is, I’m afraid that the hideous damage she sees in her “Tobacco” smoking patients has little or nothing to do with Tobacco, and the so-called “Tobacco” companies are fully divested out of range of any possible legal or regulatory action.
Many of those hundreds of companies owned by “Tobacco” money are consumer products, food, transportation, retail and leisure companies that advertise heavily in every medium. So any story about any strategy that had even a remote chance of actually harming the interests that profit directly or indirectly from the slaughter would not make it into any medium that relies on advertising. Stories that are really dangerous to the “tobacco” industry somehow don’t make it through the media screening process. And there’s not a whiff of “tobacco” anywhere in the room where the decision is made to kill the story at the editorial level – they’ve simply heard from a few of their best retailer and consumer products advertisers. I have personally seen this happen.
So you can be that the “Tobacco industry” isn’t worried about the “Tobacco-free Portfolio” movement one bit.
Divesting “Tobacco” company stock as a means to rein in their murderous behavior is worse than ineffective – it makes people feel that they are actually accomplishing something. No portfolio manager could divest of every stock and bond connected to every company owned by “Tobacco” money – there wouldn’t be many stocks or bonds left to own.
But you can’t even scratch the “Tobacco” industry by selling off its stocks. However, the industry still puts on a good show for the quixotic victors whenever someone like our plucky Aussie Oncologist does appear.
It fights and fights and then gives up and wails and gnashes its teeth – just like it did with the “big” Tobacco Liability settlements a few years ago. “Oh stop, stop. Here, take a few billion dollars. You’ve got us. We give up. We’ll do better from now on.”
We’ve all heard it and seen it and while a lot of us know it’s just an act very few of us can see what a truly well-crafted act it is. This act cost hundreds of millions, probably billions of dollars and decades to craft to perfection. The industry has been hiring the best behavior modification scientists in the world for decades, along with thousands of other scientists in many other disciplines, either directly or through hidden sponsorship with “research grants”. The industry almost has a 100% effective mindset in place at all levels of society, and keeping people fixated on “Tobacco” and “Nicotine” is at the core of the strategy.
However, if you have read this far you are one of the people that the “Tobacco” industry really, really hopes will just shrug your shoulders and walk away. Oh well, it’s all true but what can be done about it?
I do have a small suggestion. A class action lawsuit that actually identifies a class of cigarette smokers that consists of people who have been damaged by this industry in specific ways by cigarette products based on a specific, broad and deep knowledge ON THE PART OF THE ATTORNEYS of how the industry operates, would succeed quite nicely and not just in a monetary awards for the plaintiffs. Such a lawsuit could actually lead to meaningful change, if not from the existing “Tobacco” industry then from an alternative heirloom, truly natural Tobacco movement on the local level, perhaps right alongside legalized Cannabis. I don’t believe this kind of legal action has ever been tried, but would love to hear from anyone who knows of such a case.
This industry’s vulnerability is that it is so wealthy, powerful, diversified and protected that it has come to rely completely on its ability to keep on fooling all the people all the time. This industry believes that it controls all of the rules of the game that it has us all playing. And Rule #1 is that we all agree that Tobacco and Nicotine are the problems. So, all together now …..
This industry is pure psychosis in institutional form.
