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
You may be interested in these related posts:
Prostate Cancer & Tobacco Pesticides: Hidden Links
Hidden DDT contamination of tobacco products may be a missing link in the equation connecting the Korean Genome, Tobacco product smoking, and the emerging Type 2 Diabetes epidemic in Korea.
Background
First, we have data-based hard evidence from lab tests just completed (12/18) that the American tobacco supply appears to be heavily contaminated (see data below), and we are certain based on this and other data that this reflects the global tobacco supply situation.
There is also this:
1. Solid research (cited below) that shows that exposure during fetal development to specific organochlorine pesticides including DDT leads by now-known genetic pathways to increased risk, and increased rates of Type 2 Diabetes in people with the Korean genome.
2. The connection between smoking tobacco products and Type 2 Diabetes among Koreans (cited below) is also well established, but there is no cross-over understanding of the role of pesticides in smoking-related disease.
Without taking the hidden pesticides in tobacco products into account, the relationship between smoking and Diabetes cannot be fully understood, and the specific genetic vulnerabilities of Korean people cannot be accounted for in making health care decisions. With such knowledge, doctors would be better able to treat patients, and reluctant patients would have new evidence-based smoking quitting motivation showing them the specific pesticides in their specific tobacco product brand choice and what those pesticides are doing to their treatment outcome.
3. Other research (cited below) shows that the damaging effects of DDT exposure persist across multiple generations, and that people of Asian ancestry are disproportionately vulnerable to certain specific genetic damage from DDT exposure in previous generations.
Unfortunately the problem of DDT and Diabetes doesn’t stop with the person who is smoking contaminated tobacco today. It appears that even if a person today is not a smoker, and not being exposed to DDT that way, if their mother or maternal grandmother smoked she was undoubtedly exposed to DDT with every puff, and that effect is now known to reach across generations and put exposed people at higher risk of multiple diseases.
This strongly implies that Koreans with Type 2 Diabetes today whose mother’s mother smoked may have inherited the damaged genes that led to their diabetes from a grandmother whose DNA was attacked by the pesticides in her cigarettes 50 years ago.
4. It’s an open secret that Asian tobacco products are heavily contaminated with pesticide residues including DDT and other organochlorine pesticides. Asian health authorities have been struggling for yearstrying to find a way to stop the tobacco pesticide contamination but the industry has the fix in at every important political and regulatory level in every country including, I’m very sure, in Korea.
5. In this post I will offer links to peer-reviewed research and hard data to demonstrate that this is a possibility worth examining. These pesticides are known contaminants of tobacco productsworldwide.
The Most Compelling Evidence
First, here’s new hard data showing the extent of pesticide contamination of American tobacco products. (Notice the multiple endocrine-disruptors.)
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Here’s a startling study linking DDT to obesity and diabetes across generations of people, which given the history of smoking in Korea suggests a link to today’s Korean Diabetes epidemic among others.
Ancestral environmental exposures to a variety of environmental factors and toxicants have been shown to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The present work examined the potential transgenerational actions of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on obesity and associated disease.
Conclusions
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.
At least some portion of the Type 2 Diabetes epidemic among Korean smokers must be due to their genetic vulnerability to organochlorine pesticides like the DDT hidden in the tobacco products they are smoking.
In our recent tests of off-the-shelf American tobacco products for pesticide contamination, 20% of the samples tested revealed a high concentration of DDT. The following study looked at Koreans only but if this pattern is repeated or amplified among tobacco brands smoked by Asian populations, then smoking OC-contaminated tobacco products represents a hidden danger of increased risk for Type 2 Diabetes. This is due to the unreasonably dangerous exposure of smokers and their immediate households to OC pesticides in tobacco product smoke.
This research also has strong implications for Korean-American and in fact all Asian-American youth who disproportionately smoke thehighly contaminated brandsof tobacco products that are often the only choice available in marginalized Asian-American communities. Obviously Asian youth in America have Asian genomes, which means that they are at heightened risk of transgenerational pesticide-induced disease from smoking contaminated tobacco products.
Another Piece Of The Puzzle
We see that DDT damage crosses generations. Now let’s see what it specifically does to Koreans.
Low-dose organochlorine (OC) pesticides have recently been associated with type 2 diabetes in several non-Asian general populations. As there is currently epidemic type 2 diabetes in Asia, we investigated the associations between OC pesticides and type 2 diabetes in Koreans.
Most OC pesticides showed strong associations with type 2 diabetes after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smoking.
In this exploratory study with small sample, low-dose background exposure to OC pesticides was strongly associated with prevalent type 2 diabetes in Koreans even though absolute concentrations of OC pesticides were no higher than in other populations. Asians may be more susceptible to adverse effects of OC pesticides than other races.
Notice that this study found the effects of OC pesticides even AFTER smoking was controlled as a factor, which means that the effects of the pesticide contaminants in the tobacco products were masked in the data, but would have spiked the results even more if shown.
Unfortunately multiple research studies show that older Koreans strongly tend to continue smoking after being diagnosed with Diabetes, which means that those smokers are continuing to reinforce the cause of their disease while being treated. I have to also wonder about the cross-interactions between all of the pesticides in what they are smoking and the medications that they are taking to treat the disease.
In other words, unknown to them or their doctors, smoking is continuing to expose them to the OC pesticides that caused their diabetes in the first place, which probably effectively cancels out any positive impact treatment may be having.
Younger age, lower economic status, heavier smoking habit, lower Charlson Comorbidity Index and comorbid hypertension were identified as factors associated with continued smoking after the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
Older patients and patients with longer diabetic duration were more likely to quit smoking.
Contrastingly, smokers in the lower economic status and heavier smoking habit categories were more likely to continue smoking after the diagnosis.
Conclusion
The economic, social and personal cost burden that the 100% preventable OC pesticide contamination of tobacco products imposes on Asian countries may represent the difference between a viable healthy economy and society and a sickened, low-productivity, low energy society in Asia.
Given the rapidly advancing chemistry of pesticide agents and their increasing impact on the human endocrine system, Asian societies must control this devastating hidden and unregulated poisoning of their people by the international tobacco cartels.
As you can see in these related posts, this issue is by no means confined to people with Asian genomes, not to DDT, nor to Diabetes.
The data and research studies we’ll look at in this post offer evidence that many, many millions of people today who are suffering from obesity may have a problem that, for those with a specific kind of family history of smoking, is totally independent of their diet or other behavior. In other words they aren’t eating or doing anything that can completely explain their obesity, but they are suffering, getting sick and dying of it. They may not be able or choose to eat the best diet, and they may not be able to live in the healthiest environment, but do those factors explain what’s causing their obesity enough that we can say “case closed”?
The newest research (shown and linked-to below) says the case is far from closed. It is linked to hidden endocrine disrupting pesticides including heavy DDT in the tobacco products smoked by women in the 1955-1980 time period. And by the way, knowing that pesticide damage may have been done to your mother or grandmother by constant DDT exposure, and that you were exposed before and maybe after birth, may lead your doctors today toward thinking about new ways of helping you.
So this post and these ideas aren’t just about raining awareness of the terrible things that smoking did to mothers and grandmothers of today’s generations, it’s about how knowing what what was done can help us do what we need to do to repair the damage if that’s possible.
To begin with, we have a study that shows us, although that was not the researcher’s objective, that people suffering from obesity today had mothers or grandmothers who were exposed. Not exposed by smoking – nobody knew that or even admits it today. But because as we’ll see shortly cigarettes were loaded with DDT in the period 1955-1980, people struggling with obesity today may well be the victims of DDT in the cigarettes their mother or grandmother smoked in 1970. DDT is now classified along with a number other supertoxic pesticides as anObesogen – a chemical compound that causes obesity with the right exposure. It was a hidden but heavy contaminant of the tobacco product supply in those days, along with other supertoxic organochlorines including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldren, Heptachlor, and Chordane.
This means that that people born to mothers who smoked 1955-1980, or to mothers whose own mother smoked 1955-1980, are at higher risk of transgenerational obesity just from that factor, exposure to DDT in the womb, even without any further exposure. In utero DDT exposure at just the wrong point in the unfolding tissues of the fetus, causes specific DNA damage that extends well beyond obesity in the later life of the unborn child to include multiple kidney, prostate, testicular and ovarian diseases and several specific cancers includingbreast cancer and childhood leukemia.
Here is a data table from a confidential internal RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company that shows the levels of DDT contamination of their three most popular brands. Virtually any woman smoking an RJ Reynolds brand in those years, and earlier, was inhaling DDT at these levels. If she was pregnant, her child was exposed at precisely the right point to initiate the obesogenic process because even if she didn’t smoke every day of her pregnancy DDT lingers and accumulates in organs and fatty tissues. Her babies would have been exposed, and the transgenerational process initiated.
I hope that this information can empower people suffering from obesity or any of the other diseases now associated with transgenerational effects of DDT exposure to seek alternative treatments and therapies that may help in ways not being addressed by Western Allopathic medicine as represented by the US FDA, which actively rejects responsibility for regulating pesticide contamination of tobacco products. FDA simply refuses to so so, and there can only be one reason for that. Only one.
Ancestral environmental exposures to a variety of environmental factors and toxicants have been shown to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease. The present work examined the potential transgenerational actions of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on obesity and associated disease.
Conclusions
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.
Here is direct evidence that smokers of at least brands of RJR cigarettes were exposed to DDT with each puff they took before, during and after pregnancy. I have a copy of the original report found in the Tobacco settlement files. Here are the important data.
RJR Confidential June 21, 1972
Project 2358 – Cigarette Development
Notebook Pages: 250701-250719
In Cigarette
DDT – Range PPM (20 samples)
DDT – Avg PPM (20 Samples)
4841 – Regular Unfiltered
4.14 – 7.96
6.06 +/- 0.99
4842 – Filter King
3.38 – 6.65
4.95 +/- 0.90
4843 – Filter King
4.86 – 6.82
5.89 +/- 0.61
In Cigarette Smoke
4841 – Regular Unfiltered
0.35 – 0.57
0.42 +/- 0.06
4842 – Filter King
0.16 – 0.35
0.025 +/- 0.05
4843 – Filter King
0.24 – 0.46
0.35 +/- 0.05
This level of contamination was universal in 1972, and included many other organochlorines that RJR didn’t test for – at least not in this report. But tobacco products in those days were heavily contaminated with the whole range of OC pesticides including Endrin, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Chlordane, and many others whose impact on human health have never been studied.
This also means that people who themselves smoke or use DDT contaminated tobacco products today are reinforcing the transgenerational effects of DDT exposure by their mother or grandmother. It’s also important to say that the tobacco products with the highest levels of DDT today are those being smoked by poor, marginalized Hispanic, African American and Native American youth.
Obesity is one of the known effects of current DDT exposure, so as long as this synergistic pathway goes unrecognized in our understanding of obesity the opportunities for successful healing will be unnecessarily limited. A good first step would be to remove all tobacco products contaminated by high levels of DDT from the market.
This study of transgenerational effects of exposure to DDT ought to provoke questions about what the tobacco manufacturers knew in 1972, or earlier, or afterwards about organochlorine pesticides in their products.
Oregonians smoke 11.1 Million grams or 390,000 ounces of tobacco products a day. That puts Tobacco sales in Oregon over 4 Billion grams, or almost 9 million pounds of tobacco products a year. Californians smoke 62.3 Million grams or 2.3 Million ounces of Tobacco products a day. The amount of tobacco product smoked in California in a year almost requires an exponential expression – 22,739,500,000 grams a year.
How many of those 4 Billion grams a year are being grown by Oregon Cannabis growers? How about the 22 Billion a year in Cali?
How many of those 11.1 million grams a day in Oregon are heirloom tobacco varieties like Mopan Mayan, Mount Pima or Aztec Rustica?
How many have such individualistic aroma and flavor profiles that they match beautifully with unique Oregon-grown Cannabis terpene profiles?
How many are being sold alongside Oregon’s premium Cannabis in Oregon dispensaries?
How many of those grams are “medicinal Tobacco” – and what could a new designation like that mean?
I think it’s quite possible that some of those 11.1 million grams a day can be authentic heirloom tobacco, grown both indoors and sun-grown as a complementary crop by skilled Oregon Cannabis growers. I think it can sell at $3.50/gram, $100/ounce retail implying gross farm revenues of $30/ounce or $480/pound at wholesale, with strong retail-price web selling options.
A market of 9 million pounds a year at $480 a pound represents a theoretical total for on-farm revenues of $4.5 Billion per year. A fraction of that amount would still represent a major new agricultural opportunity for Oregon growers.
As a point of comparison, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco buys 1.7 million pounds of organic tobacco a year from 100+ growers worldwide for manufacturing just the American Spirit organic cigarette brand. None of the SFNT’s other natural brands are organic tobacco. As you can see, even American Spirit organic cigarettes total tobacco demand for worldwide production amounts to only a tiny fraction of just Oregon’s own tobacco consumption. There may be a lot of room in local, state and regional markets for new heirloom tobacco/cannabis brands that can begin very small at the farm producer level.
I think $25,000 a quarter acre (500-600 cured pounds) is reasonable if the untapped market is anything like what I believe it is. An existing cannabis grower can find out pretty quickly. Just put in a couple each of maybe six different heirloom tobacco strains off to the side, raise them and cure them out using traditional methods, then do a nice blend with your cannabis flowers (or trim) and try it out locally with maybe a few hundred people. Find out what they think. Get an idea of what they will pay. After doing that, any cannabis grower would know for sure what the local market is for heirloom tobacco at virtually no cost to find out.
Grams of Tobacco Consumed Per-Day In Selected Cannabis Growing States
Cannabis and Tobacco are such a natural pair in the marketplace and in peoples’ lives that it makes sense, if you are in the Cannabis business, to look at the tobacco business. You can bet this predatory industry is looking at Oregon’s Cannabis.
In order to approach this idea productively you have to set aside everything you believe you know about Tobacco itself, the Tobacco industry, growing Tobacco, Tobacco products, the economics of Tobacco, and the medical and scientific evidence against Tobacco (which is actually against Tobacco products – not at all the same thing, which is at the core of the industry’s con game.)
So far there doesn’t seem to have been a market anywhere in the world where $500/pound indoor-grown heirloom, perhaps even organic tobacco can be justified by a potential market. Nobody in the world is currently paying $100/Ounce retail for tobacco. That probably sounds crazy.
However, I think it’s possible that Oregon may have inadvertently reached the point where people can discover the value of $100/ounce tobacco, which is what I think real heirloom tobacco is worth, but for the moment let’s just agree that tobacco is a very valuable plant that Cannabis growers may not have considered and that the public has not yet discovered.
I believe that thousands of people are ready to discover the pleasures of heirloom tobacco smoked and vaped with their artisan cannabis, and all the circumstances that could release this unrealized demand look to me like they line up for Oregon Cannabis growers in 2019.
With many of the heirloom varieties maturing at under 70 days and some in as little as 45 days after planting out, there is plenty of time for indoor and outdoor growers to get ready, put in a small tobacco patch, and see what happens.
Background & Discussion
There are +/- 800,000 tobacco product users in Oregon, and they smoke, dip, vape and chew everything from cigarettes to blunts, from snus to chew. But for the sake of keeping it simple let’s just say that on average each tobacco product user in Oregon smokes 17 cigarettes a day, the US average, or the equivalent in some other tobacco product. At 0.8 grams of tobacco materials per cigarette (which is a whole ‘nuther story), that means that Oregon tobacco users are consuming 11,100,000 grams of what they believe is tobacco a day, over 4 Billion grams a year.
With many Oregon Cannabis growers getting slammed at only $500/pound for their flowers and their indoor production costs running around $1.25/gram, many growers are looking around for ideas, and this may be one worth considering. Even when Cannabis prices can be managed back up to more reasonable levels by opening export markets, which will provide temporary relief for some growers, the time may be right for growers to consider the potential market for heirloom Tobacco production at what I think is a sustainable grower price of $500/pound.
Heirloom Tobacco Under Lights – The Research
I really don’t know that it will be feasible to put tobacco and cannabis plants side-by-side under lights as a commercial proposition. It’s never been tried to my knowledge, and there are some questions to be answered. But, with some of the compact tobacco strains whose height and growth cycle to maturity can be coordinated with the Cannabis strains under cultivation – quite likely. It is certainly one of the first things I would try. Some kind of inter-planting might work well, especially with some of the heirloom tobacco varieties that have compact growth profiles. I have several varieties in mind that grow quickly to maturity, have relatively compact profiles, and have leaves that cure to mild but potent smoke.
But whether in its own space under lights, or in a curtained off part of an indoor Cannabis grow space – I believe that heirloom tobacco production under lights might be a very profitable junior partner in an indoor Cannabis business. There has been plenty of research and experience with conventional tobacco that can be ported over to indoor tobacco/cannabis production.
Experienced Cannabis growers will be able to immediately put the research data on every aspect of tobacco to use in growing heirloom varieties even though almost all the research is done on either the conventional tobacco types used by the industry or experimental strains that were never meant to be smoked. There are thousands of studies involving every conceivable parameter of tobacco grown in greenhouses or under lights for research.
Be careful! Sorting through all the irrelevant tobacco research that’s out there could take a lifetime, since tobacco is the white rat of plant genetics and is used extensively in plant biology research worldwide. Sorting through and applying the relevant knowledge base to small-scale heirloom tobacco production will not be a stretch, and I can be helpful. It’s important to note that since Cannabis growers love to experiment, they will find that Tobacco is at least as responsive and interesting a plant as Cannabis. Once a market for premium Oregon heirloom tobacco is established, a market for new strains of heirloom tobacco crosses won’t be far behind.
There are a number of special characteristics of tobacco that I think will make it profitable enough per square foot of indoor production space that it can work from that perspective. For example, the way tobacco is harvested, one maturing leaf at a time working from the bottom up, is in synch with the rhythms of Cannabis flower harvesting with multiple, continuous passes. Cannabis flowers and tobacco leaves receive parallel treatments in handling and drying – I see no reason why they couldn’t share the same space. Tobacco and Cannabis can, obviously, be packaged together in a lot of creative ways.
There are many other reasons why I believe that parallel indoor tobacco and cannabis production is feasible here in Oregon and maybe elsewhere.
Potential Heirloom Tobacco Markets
Under rational market conditions Cannabis production is much more profitable than anything else including Tobacco (wait for legal Coca Leaf production), but while Tobacco isn’t Cannabis in dollar value per SF, it’s up there.
More important the markets for Cannabis and Tobacco are almost exactly the same – with some important differences, but still with huge overlap. In other words, people who enjoy beautiful Cannabis flowers will love aromatic tobacco leaf, and people who are hooked on 20-40-60 commercial cigarettes a day might find that 2-3 hand-rolled (or pre-rolled) real tobacco smokes would do them just fine. Oregon Health Authority says that roughly 250,000 of the 800,000 Oregonian adults who smoke cigarettes also smoke Cannabis – I think the crossover is far greater and will exceed expectations. The same is true in every Cannabis-legal state.
The fact that high quality heirloom tobacco indoors under lights on a boutique commercial scale hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean the knowledge isn’t there – it is. Frankly there is very little that is mysterious about growing tobacco, and the finer points of each strain will reveal themselves to curious growers just as the secrets of Cannabis plants unfold for the attentive grower. There are very good reasons why Native Americans understood that Tobacco is a sacred plant, and with their respectful attitudes toward sacred traditions Oregon growers are well-suited to re-discover those qualities while building an incredible new business sector at the same time.
A good selection of heirloom tobacco seeds is, for some strange reason, readily available online, and Native American tribes have privileged access to a US government-funded tobacco germplasm collection where every strain of tobacco ever grown or discovered wild in the world is kept alive and producing a pure line of seed. In many, even most cases people will be able to access tobacco seed from the specific sacred tobacco that, for example, may have been collected 150 years ago on their ancestral land by a government botanist cataloging Native American medicinal plants.
The possibilities are really quite endless.
Sun-Grown Cannabis Flower
I’m an old-time outdoor Cannabis grower and I don’t mean to ignore the potential for a single summer crop of sun-grown heirloom tobacco as an adjunct to Cannabis for Oregon’s outdoor growers. The same environmental and cultural factors that make Oregon Cannabis such a distinctive high-value crop can work to the advantage of Oregon Cannabis growers who might start with a few heirloom tobacco plants outdoors as an experiment and see where it goes. It might take a bit of legal work or maybe not, but I don’t see any reason why an Oregon Cannabis grower who wants to grow some Aztec Rustica and then pre-roll some of their Durban Poison flower in their Aztec Rustica leaf shouldn’t go right ahead and do it.
And of course it won’t be long before somebody discovers the delights of THC & Terpene-infused heirloom tobacco leaf.
The fact that tobacco is very attractive to bugs will undoubtedly be an issue outdoors in Oregon; however, native tobacco strains are adapted to their natural environments and there are a number of NW native tobacco strains available as well as some heirloom strains from other environments that might also do well in Oregon’s short-cycle summers. There has also been a lot of work done on organic tobacco production done at NCSU that can be adapted for both indoor and outdoor purposes in Oregon.
At the core of Oregon growers’ advantage, however, is that Oregon growers are used to spending a lot of quality time with their plants, and that’s exactly what it takes to produce premium tobacco. I have studied 300 years of worldwide tobacco literature and can say without doubt that experienced hand labor is proven beyond doubt to be the path to premium tobacco. It’s really no different than wine grapes or Cannabis flowers. Technology and chemistry can go a long way in certain directions, but there will always be a market for hand-produced, highest quality, organic or responsibly grown Cannabis, Wine, Food and Tobacco.
A New Market For Trim?
Cannabis growers may find that they have a higher-value use for their trim when they blend their highest quality Cannabis trim leaf with heirloom tobacco leaf to make a very special RYO blend that can carry their own growers brand name because of its unique characteristics. With over 800 varieties of heirloom tobacco to choose from, growers will have no trouble differentiating themselves through skillful tobacco/cannabis blending of both leaf and flower.
CBD Hemp
Many different people are attracted to the exploding market for responsibly-grown CBD hemp, and growing Cannabis as hemp using very similar horticultural techniques can be very profitable as long as the market holds up. People say that CBD growers right now are getting $2500-$60,000 acre for their production depending on where they are, what strain they’re growing, how well its growing, and the selling terms and prices in their market. I’m sure that a lot of people are already warning about a flood of new production hitting the market and what that will do to prices, so Hemp growers who have learned from history are probably already looking around for complementary production possibilities.
I’ll propose that as long as a grower is getting into a couple of acres of CBD hemp as a start-up why not put in a quarter acre of an attractive heirloom tobacco strain too and see what happens if you pick it, cure it, and sell it on Amazon or at your farmers market. It’s at least as easy as Cannabis to grow, harvest and cure. Then you’ll be able to answer the important questions for yourself. Do people like it? Will they pay a good price for it? If they will, maybe you ought to think about growing some more. Not go into full-scale heirloom tobacco production, but a nice steady $20-30,000/acre (or more) on a couple of acres isn’t a bad little side-business. Maybe if a few growers are doing it then you get together as an heirloom tobacco growers co-op, buy some inexpensive, low-volume tobacco leaf processing machinery, and develop your own brand.
Lets Do the Math
At this point, ZERO of Oregon’s 11.1 million grams a day are heirloom, exotic tobaccos grown under lights year-round and under the summer sun by experienced Oregon Cannabis growers. Maybe that’s because we haven’t actually done the math and maybe looked at things in new ways.
Here’s the math – pretty simple stuff.
40,000 SF of Tobacco = 2200+ pounds of prime leaf* per cycle @ $500/Pound = $1,100,000/per cycle x 2 cycles/year = $2,200,000/Year/Acre
*this is a conservative fact-based yield estimate; I will argue that a reasonable expectation indoors under lights is 3000 pounds of prime leaf/acre/cycle
Why $500/Pound? It’s just my opinion of what organic heirloom tobacco might sell for, and because that would work out to about $30/Ounce to the grower and with wholesale/retail margins and taxes we get to $100/Ounce or $10/8th retail for organic heirloom Tobacco at retail. So that’s the question – will a significant number of current Cannabis and Tobacco users be willing to pay $100/ounce for heirloom organic tobacco when it is presented as a premium, Oregon-grown experience in line with ancient traditions.
One ounce of authentic, powerful heirloom tobacco won’t be smoked or vaped at nearly the frequency of contaminated, synthetic commercial tobacco products, and so for regular smokers that $100 ounce will last as long as their ounce of Cannabis and will be perceived by many as extending the life of the more costly Cannabis ounce. We can bet that a lot of people will do the math – one ounce of Cannabis at $300 and one ounce of Tobacco at $100 = two ounces of great smoke at $400 instead of $600. Sweet!
I think that the perceived value of heirloom Tobacco and Cannabis will be seen as roughly equal from the smoker’s point of view. Using tobacco and cannabis together is already well accepted and understood, and in fact is the preferred way of smoking in much of the world. What will be new for Oregon smokers, and for possible export markets in other US states as well, is the experience of smoking authentic tobacco, whether combined with Oregon Cannabis or by itself.
Oregon Cannabis and Tobacco growers would be able to make as a legitimate health claim within Oregon, directed only at Oregon smokers and vapers, that a combination of responsibly-grown heirloom tobacco with responsibly grown Cannabis is a healthier alternative to commercial tobacco. I’ve just documented the extensive pesticide contamination of commercial tobacco products being sold in Oregon, so making the relative safety argument is a slam dunk.
Commercial cigarettes aren’t actually what anyone thinks of as real tobacco, but that comes under a discussion of the marketing advantages of Oregon-grown heirloom tobacco. As for Federal regulations on tobacco; do Oregon growers care about Federal regulations on Cannabis when it comes to in-state Cannabis production and sales?
I think that the Oregon Cannabis industry ought to give serious thought to the development of a parallel heirloom tobacco industry.
We’ve just finished testing off-the-shelf tobacco products from local mini-marts in Portland, Oregon and among the 20+ hidden, unregulated xenobiotic contaminants that we were able to identify (see below) we found extremely high concentrations of Carbendazim. This contamination occurred in a little cigar brand that is #1 in Latino communities and high in popularity in African-American, Native American and other marginalized & low-income communities where tobacco product choices are restricted to the cheapest, and now we know the most contaminated brands.
Carbendazim has been banned in the EU since 2014. It attacks and destroys the reproductive and immune systems of young people, particularly young Latinos, African-Americans, and Native Americans whose genetic materials are known to be more vulnerable to Carbendazim than youth of European ancestry. As you can see in the data, Carbendazim is only one many previously hidden, unregulated contaminants we found, each with it’s own health impact. But for the moment let’s focus just on the Carbendazim 0.843 mg/kg that’s being inhaled 20-40-60 times a day by @ 850,000 young people in the US right now today.
Carbendazim contamination disproportionately impacts marginalized young people who fall victim to tobacco products and who, because of poverty and carefully targeted marketing, have few choices available to them other than the cheapest and most contaminated brands. Please notice the relationship between price and contamination in the data below.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
As you can see, Carbendazim shows up in our first-ever data on pesticide contaminants of tobacco products (right hand column third row). This brand, Swisher Sweets, is #1 in popularity among young smokers, who are also right in the middle of their reproductive years. It is heavily marketed to youth, and is designed with sweet flavors and heavy social media advertising to be part of a cool lifestyle.
This means that these young people, in the middle of their reproductive years, are at the highest possible risk for suffering the known consequences of Carbendazim exposure. (And all the other pesticides you see there, each of which deserves it’s own discussion.) This is made more serious by the route of exposure, because inhalation exposure is far more toxic than eating or skin exposure, and the frequency, because smokers (and fetus and child) are exposed to the pesticides with every puff.
The bottom line is that 0.843 mg/kg is an extraordinary level of Carbendazim to find in any consumer product, but especially in an off-the-shelf tobacco product being marketed heavily to kids, considering that it has been totally banned in much of the world since 2014, is strictly regulated in the US, and is totally illegal on tobacco. Imagine the response of health authorities if this were found on school lunches, slurpees at the 7/11, beer at the mini-mart or granola at Whole Foods?
The problem isn’t just that the Carbendazim is present. For there to be that much Carbendazim residue, it had to have been sprayed on the tobacco deliberately, heavily and recently. There is full knowledge of the EU ban, and the reasons for it. All tobacco manufacturers have notified by their own scientific authority CORESTA. The manufacturers know, or have every reason to know, that they are committing serious race-based crimes against humanity. I can only assume that they have been at this for so long that they actually don’t realize what they are doing to so many people.
Here are just a few of the peer-reviewed research data links that throw light on this hidden relationship
“The literature review indicates that CBZ induces reproductive and developmental toxicity through alteration of many key events which are important to spermatogenesis. It seems that this fungicide may influence the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad axis in addition to being a testicular toxicant.”
“2,5-Hexanedione (2,5-HD), a taxol-like promoter of microtubule assembly, and carbendazim (CBZ), a colchicine-like inhibitor of microtubule assembly, are two environmental testicular toxicants that target and disrupt microtubule function in Sertoli cells.”
“Administration of carbendazim induced significant decrease in testis weight, diameter, and germinal epithelial height of the seminiferous tubules. Histological results revealed degeneration of seminiferous tubules, loss of spermatogenic cells, and apoptosis. Moreover, carbendazim caused elevation of testicular malondialdehyde (MDA), marker of lipid peroxidation, and reduced the activity of the antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT).”
“Sertoli cells are the primary cellular target for a number of pharmaceutical and environmental testicular toxicants, including 2,5-hexanedione, carbendazim, and mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate. Exposure to these individual compounds can result in impaired Sertoli cell function and subsequent germ cell loss. The loss of testicular function is marked by histopathological changes in seminiferous tubule diameter, seminiferous epithelial sloughing, vacuolization, spermatid head retention, germ cell apoptosis, and altered microtubule assembly.”
“We found that carbendazim causes embryotoxicity, apoptosis, teratogenicity, infertility, hepatocellular dysfunction, endocrine-disrupting effects, disruption of haematological functions, mitotic spindle abnormalities, mutagenic and aneugenic effect.”
And the issue isn’t just Carbendazim as you can see looking back in the data. Most of the individual contaminants are concerning by themselves, but they are additive and synergistic in effect and their impact on human health in that regard is absolutely unknown. What is known now, and IMO it ought to be enough, is that young smokers are inhaling a toxic cocktail of chemicals each designed to operate in different ways at the nano-level to disrupt basic life processes. The dosage of the most advanced pesticides doesn’t matter – they don’t need a “critical mass” to work. A couple of molecules, well below the level of detection, is enough for them to do what they were designed to do to the reproductive systems and genetic materials of bugs, and human teens are simply unfortunate collateral damage in the tobacco industry’s search for increased profits through chemistry.
There doesn’t seem to be any question about the connection between pesticide exposure of agricultural workers and prostate cancer. We know that this kind of exposure leads to prostate cancer, and we know which pesticides are the causal agents.
Through new research that we have just completed, we can also now identify specific pesticides that are known to cause prostate cancer that contaminate specific tobacco products. This means that a whole new connection between smoking and prostate cancer starts to emerge.
We can see that specific pesticide contaminants of tobacco products are the same pesticides that have been shown to cause prostate cancer in exposed farm workers. (I discuss farm worker exposure vs smoker exposure below.)
Check out this data from lab tests we’ve just finished running on off-the-shelf tobacco products. Notice the totally illegal and banned worldwide DDT. Notice all the Azole fungicides like Penconazole. Check that amazing concentration of Cypermethrin. But really, with 0.816 mg/kg of DDT in every puff, all day every day, what other direct linkages to prostate cancer would you need? How about that 0.843 mg/kg of Carbenzadim, banned in the EU since 2014.
We are sadly confident that the entire tobacco product supply in the US will prove to be similarly heavily contaminated. We plan to test as many brands as possible as soon as funding becomes available. But here’s what we’ve found so far.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Farm workers are exposed heavily to known prostate carcinogens regularly during certain parts of the year, whereas smokers of the brands shown above are inhaling known prostate carcinogens 50-100 times a day and more, year-round. So we are looking at two kinds of exposure – heavy during the season for farm workers, and low-level 7/365 for smokers. Intermittent mid-level exposure vs chronic low-level exposure. Also the farm workers are being exposed to one chemical at a time where the smoker is getting a toxic cocktail. Then of course there are farm workers who smoke the cheap tobacco brands like little cigars because that’s all they can afford. Double or triple whammy there.
One thing that needs special attention with this new connection is the clear evidence that a smoker with prostate cancer risks that cancer turning very aggressive if it feeds on DDT and other endocrine-disrupting pesticides, which we can now show are just what that aggressive cancer is getting with every puff. Doctors see this happen in relapsing patients and know that it’s connected with their smoking but can’t explain why it’s happening.
Here’s the message: If you stop feeding that thing in your prostate the chemicals that turn it aggressive maybe it will calm down and maybe you and the docs can get it under control.
So, here are a few key references. There are plenty more – it just depends on how much convincing anyone needs.
Results: The review included 49 studies published between 1993 and 2015. All studies were in English and analyzed exposure to pesticides and/or agricultural activities. Most studies (32 articles) found a positive association between prostate cancer and pesticides or agricultural occupations, with estimates ranging from 1.01 to 14.10.
So, what if tobacco products were loaded with pesticides but nobody knew about that contamination, so even though they knew there was a link between smoking and prostate cancer they didn’t know why? Would that show up in smoking & prostate cancer studies? Well, it seems that it might.
Data from the peer-reviewed literature suggested an association of smoking and aggressive PCa. Although the pathophysiology underlying this association remains unclear, smokers presented higher PCa mortality and worse outcome after treatment. Smoking-cessation counseling should be implemented for patients with PCa, although its effect on PCa progression should be investigated.
OK, but how do we know that the pesticides in tobacco products have anything to do with prostate cancer? Well, first, pesticides used in tobacco are heavily used throughout agriculture. Second, we know that at least two of the contaminants of the little cigar we tested are potent human carcinogens and one acts specifically on human testicles. Now your testicles aren’t your prostate, but that’s getting close enough to merit a second glance if you’re a smoker, don’t you think?
“Carbendazim is a broad-spectrum benzimidazole antifungal with potential antimitotic and antineoplastic activities. Although the exact mechanism of action is unclear, carbendazim appears to binds to an unspecified site on tubulin and suppresses microtubule assembly dynamic. This results in cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase and an induction of apoptosis.”
Oh, and that other carcinogen – the one that directly impacts your prostate?
p,p′-Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,p′-DDT) and p,p′-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p′-DDE) repress prostate specific antigen levels in human prostate cancer cell lines
“Thus, we conclude that men who have been exposed to either DDT or DDE may produce a false-negative PSA test when screening for prostate cancer, resulting in an inaccurate clinical diagnosis. More importantly, prolonged exposure to these anti-androgens may mimic androgen ablation therapy in individuals with prostate cancer, thus exacerbating the condition by inadvertently forcing adaptation to this stress early in the disease.”
These are farmers, not smokers, but their prostate didn’t like the DDT exposure and neither will the prostate of anyone who inhales pesticide-contaminated tobacco product smoke (or vapor).
Prostate cancer risk and exposure to pesticides in British Columbia farmers.
“The significant association between prostate cancer risk and exposure to DDT (OR = 1.68; 95% CI: 1.04-2.70 for high exposure), simazine (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.08-3.33 for high exposure), and lindane (OR = 2.02; 95% CI: 1.15-3.55 for high exposure) is in keeping with those previously reported in the literature.
If you keep smoking things just get worse; if you quit after 10 years the risk disappears. But if you are going to keep smoking at least pay attention to the pesticides that you’re inhaling and choose the least contaminated brand possible.
European Urology, December 2015, Volume 68, Issue 6, Pages 949–956
Association of Cigarette Smoking and Smoking Cessation with Biochemical Recurrence of Prostate Cancer in Patients Treated with Radical Prostatectomy
We investigated the effect of smoking on the risk of prostate cancer recurrence in patients with treated with surgery. We found that former smokers and current smokers were at higher risk of cancer recurrence compared to patients who never smoked; the detrimental effect of smoking was mitigated after 10 yr or more of smoking cessation.
I’m not writing this post as a science paper – I’m writing it to point out a connection that is as obvious as it is hidden, and hoping that the message will reach people who can benefit. The message to smokers is that if you are going to smoke, pay close attention to the contaminants in your brand and stop feeding your cancer with banned pesticides. I know this is heresy but – if you’re going to keep smoking than at least smoke American Spirit organic tobacco. Fair disclosure – I invented American Spirit but lost the company to the tobacco industry not long after we started and I have absolutely no connection of any kind to the company. I don’t benefit in any way from anyone choosing American Spirit. Well, actually, the benefit I get is the only one I want, which is knowing that I may have made a contribution to the health and happiness of another person.
Does your kid, or a kid who you know and care about smoke little cigars or some other kind of cheap, flavored tobacco? Are you frustrated because you can’t stop them? Do they have a major “don’t give a shit” attitude? Even if they are being little idiots, do you understand and still want to help?
I propose some evidence-based reality and an appeal to that little idiot’s well-concealed intelligence. Do you think you can you get this kid to sit with you for one hour and read this post together. In the post I will lay out hard evidence showing how their testicles and genetic materials (and those of their friends) are under stealth chemical attack from contaminated cheap products they are being suckered into smoking. Challenge yourselves to understand the science and read through the references together – they are linked to the original research. This isn’t obscure science – this is about clear evidence of specific chemicals known to attack male reproductive organs in the tobacco brand they smoke that are there because of a cheap, money-grubbing manufacturer’s carelessness and greed. See if your discussion doesn’t trigger an instinct for self-preservation in them and maybe even help them get a clue.
We all know that “please please don’t smoke” doesn’t work, and neither does “smoking is really really bad for you”. How many millions of dollars are still being wasted on endless repetition of some version of those two “nanny state” themes? Tell a kid that there are 4000 really really bad chemicals in that cigarette, or that he’s going to get lung cancer, and he will sneer to show you how tough he is. Tell him that the cheap-ass manufacturer of that crap he’s smoking is using trash tobacco that’s such shitty stuff that it’s contaminated with totally illegal chemicals that are attacking his balls every time he takes a hit. Tell him that the brands that are poisoned this way are pushed hard to people in poor neighborhoods who can only afford cheap poisoned shit, and to people who have enough money to afford less poisoned brands but are too stupid to know the difference. Show him the data tables below and ask him what he thinks – which brands are pushed to which people in which neighborhoods? Point out, in case he doesn’t get it, that when it comes to tobacco shit definitely rolls downhill.
BTW this post is for boys. I’m working on one for girls that will be titled “Girl – Those Swisher Things Are Frying Your Eggs!”
So young Dude, you smoke Swisher Sweets. Maybe some other brands too. Lots of people love to smoke Swisher Sweets, especially when they see hotties like Cardi B sucking on their favorite kind of Swisher. But those Swisher Sweets aren’t anything like what the Man behind Cardi B wants you to think they are. No indeed.
Dude, no joke – your balls are at serious risk smoking that shit. If you’re cool with that, no problem. It’s your life. But, for the sake of those who care about you, take a little time and think about a couple of things.
Let’s begin with a reality check on those sweet fruity little cigars. Do you think you’re going to get real tobacco at 2 sticks that weigh 3 grams each for $0.99? Really? Then you must have bought your share of baggies of Oregano thinking you were getting bargain dope, because the math doesn’t work. Even if they didn’t shrivel your nuts, little cigars are not real tobacco. They are worse trash than any toxic Mexican weed you ever smoked, even when you weren’t buying Oregano, and here’s why. Those little 3 gram sticks are made especially for poor kids and stupid kids and are loaded with chemicals that do all kinds of nasty shit, but only to the people who smoke the cheap stuff. Most of those chemicals aren’t even there in the pricier brands, and Swisher Sweet smokers and little cigar smokers in general get special treatment as you can see here. This data is from tests we just ran on off-the-shelf tobacco products popular with young smokers from all kinds of communities.
Community Tobacco Control Partners Test Results 12/18
Keep your eye on that Carbendazim under “Swisher Sweets” in the right-hand column because that’s the ball-shrinker we’re talking about. I’m going to explain the connection in a minute.
To be fair you have to ask why those friendly folks at Swisher Sweet would want to bother to shrink your balls? Well, they don’t actually. They don’t care about your balls, or the kids you may want to make someday with those balls. All they’re doing is spraying their tobacco fields with chemicals that kill off the bugs more effectively by shrinking adult bug balls so they can’t have baby bugs. It’s a new way of controlling bugs, and they will tell you they have to do it. You just can’t kill bugs with pure poisons anymore – they’ve gotten resistant. But their little balls are vulnerable as hell, and that’s what these chemicals are designed to attack and destroy, so you add chemicals like Carbendazim to your chemical cocktail and wham – no bugs, and a lot more valuable tobacco per acre.
OK, bugs don’t have balls, not little ones hanging on the outside anyway, but they do have male reproductive organs and those bug equivalents of your precious balls are what Carbendazim is designed to attack and destroy.
But, unfortunately, those chemicals in the tobacco fields don’t only bust bug balls, they retain the chemical potency to twist and shrink the balls of every creature they touch, like human Swisher Sweet smokers. That would be you, young Dude, wouldn’t it?
Well hey, as long as you keep buying their shit why should they worry about a few chemicals you don’t seem to mind even if they are attacking your balls? Nobody says it’s illegal for them to have ball-busting chemicals in their little cigars, so why worry about it. Nobody inspects tobacco products for pesticides anyway because they think that anyone who smokes deserves anything that happens to them and this means that everyone from doctors to FDA to inspectors to anti-tobacco crusaders all totally ignore the presence of pesticides in tobacco products and what they would have to admit that means.
OK, this has all been trash talk. Now I’m going to assume that you understand regular English and basic science. I’m also going to assume that if you’ve read this far maybe you’re ready for some straight talk, and that you may, secretly even, be starting to give a shit. So here’s just a taste of the straight science behind your shrinking balls in regular English, with links for you to follow and make up your own mind what you’re going to do about it.
This first reference just about says it all for any young man who smokes little cigars and expects to have children:
Then there are all these peer-reviewed scientific findings:
“Although the exact mechanism of action is unclear, carbendazim appears to bind to an unspecified site on tubulin and suppresses microtubule assembly dynamic. This results in cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase and an induction of apoptosis.” (translation: it shrinks your balls.)
“Administration of carbendazim induced significant decrease in testis weight, diameter, and germinal epithelial height of the seminiferous tubules. Histological results revealed degeneration of seminiferous tubules, loss of spermatogenic cells, and apoptosis.
Moreover, carbendazim caused elevation of testicular malondialdehyde (MDA), marker of lipid peroxidation, and reduced the activity of the antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT).” (translation: it shrinks them and totally fucks them up.)
“2,5-Hexanedione (2,5-HD), a taxol-like promoter of microtubule assembly, and carbendazim (CBZ), a colchicine-like inhibitor of microtubule assembly, are two environmental testicular toxicants that target and disrupt microtubule function in Sertoli cells.” (translation: testicle toxins work together.)
“Due to synergistic effects, low environmentally present concentrations of imazalil and cypermethrin in food, and especially their mixtures with carbendazim have genotoxic potential that could be particularly dangerous over prolonged exposure in mammalian organism.”(translation: prolonged exposure destroys the genetic materials in your balls.)
If you want to read more on other linkages between pesticide contamination of tobacco products and disease please follow these links to other recent posts:
Obesity & Obesogens: The Toxic Chemical Connection
Summary
