32 million Americans are living with diagnosed type 2 diabetes, and 25% of these folks are smokers – about 7,000,000 people. Because they are diabetic, these smokers face a special set of severe hazards from deliberately concealed highly bioactive insecticide and fungicide chemicals that every US Agency – FDA, EPA, USDA, CDC, the Surgeon General, FTC – all know are present and are being concealed but refuse to regulate or even inspect for in cigarettes. These are not those mysterious “additives”, or those infamous and ridiculous “7000 chemicals”, or any of the other nasty things we’ve all been told for years are dangers to smokers. These bioactive chemicals are a completely different level of hazard to human health, but you’ve never once heard about them in any anti-tobacco propaganda. They are potent, very dangerous and in some instances banned (but used on tobacco and inhaled with every puff) insecticides and fungicides that are proven Diabetes hazards (see also here and here) that have never once been mentioned in any government ‘smoking & health’ research or in any of the anti-tobacco programs and propaganda. They are doing irreparable harm to every smoker every day and are leading every smoker toward Diabetes, but for a smoker who already has Diabetes, inhaling this concealed witch’s brew with every puff is slowly and severely damaging their organs and nerves far beyond anything else in their life. And this is all completely and easily preventable.

“After reviewing 21 previous studies, researchers found exposure to any type of pesticide was associated with a 61 percent increased risk for any type of diabetes. The increased risk for type 2 diabetes — the most common type — was 64 percent, the investigators found.”

https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20150916/pesticide-exposure-tied-to-diabetes-risk

So it’s worth asking – how much of the daily and long-term damage Diabetic smokers are suffering from smoking contaminated tobacco cigarettes, meaning virtually every commercial brand, could be 100% prevented by switching to organic tobacco cigarettes? I wonder what would happen if a Diabetic smoker could eliminate just those pesticides without having to face the often futile struggle of “quitting”? For anyone who might think – “But that’s not a solution! That”s still smoking!” I’ll simply point to the impeccable logic behind needle exchange and condom distribution programs. You deal with the harm you can deal with.

My answer is that the damage from cigarette pesticides is actually 100% preventable and it doesn’t mean that Diabetic smokers have to go through the agonies of quitting tobacco or switch to lettuce cigarettes in order to stop harming themselves. All any Diabetic smoker has to do is switch to organic tobacco cigarettes for a week to begin feeling better than they’ve felt in a long time and see their numbers begin to improve. That’s correct. Once you know that these severely hazardous pesticide contaminants are in the cigarettes you’re smoking, and once you know what they are doing to your health, it’s just common sense to avoid them if you can, and if you do even for a little while you’ll see for yourself.

This is an incredibly easy fix to a horrible, widespread problem. It’s not a total solution, but it’s a good fix for those who need it. Diabetic smokers do not have to quit smoking tobacco to quit damaging themselves with inhaled neurotoxins, mutagens, teratogens, genotoxins, obesogens, and the other classes of highly bioactive insecticide/fungicide chemicals that are concealed as cigarette contaminants with full US government knowledge and complicity. I’ll show you the hard data below on the pesticides in just one common brand, smoked by over Two Million US Diabetics, with links to other equally compelling hard evidence.

Some kinds of change need a nationwide movement, but this revolution in Diabetic health can and should take place one smoker at a time as individual smokers realize that they can take control and help heal themselves without going through the agonies and depressing failures of trying to quit smoking. Equally important is that 20,000,000 pre-diabetic smokers in the US, and untold millions more worldwide, can each acting on their own, have a positive impact on their own health even if they don’t stop smoking. It’s what smokers are inhaling along with the tobacco in the tobacco product they”re smoking that creates this 100% preventable threat to their health, completely separately from the harm that the tobacco itself may or may not be doing. Please let me show you the evidence.

This post and related posts on this blog offer hard data to show that this severe hazard to health that exists far beneath everybody’s level of awareness can be 100% prevented by individual Diabetic smokers making a simple, easy choice that the US Government, the Tobacco Cartel, and the Anti-smoking/Anti-tobacco forces all want to keep them from making. That statement may be hard to believe, so let me offer you the hard evidence that this hazard is real and painfully obvious once it’s seen, and then let me offer the simple painless solution.

Let’s Look At Marlboros

Since Marlboro is most popular US cigarette brand, with a 40% share of all cigarette smokers, I’ll assume there are roughly 2.5 million Marlboro-smoking diabetics. Let’s see what’s happening to all those cowboys.

First, when it comes to Diabetes, let’s all notice that the CDC uses the words “causes Diabetes” in the statement below, which is about as certain as any science-based statement can be, but also notice that it is “smoking” that “causes” Diabetes, not “smoking tobacco” – which is what we are all supposed to assume is meant:

“We now know that smoking causes type 2 diabetes. In fact, smokers are 30–40% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than nonsmokers.  And people with diabetes who smoke are more likely than nonsmokers to have trouble with insulin dosing and with controlling their disease.”

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/diseases/diabetes.html

But what no government agency will ever tell these 2.5 million Diabetics who smoke Marlboros, or any other brand, is that they are being exposed with every puff to a ‘cocktail’ of unregulated insecticides and fungicides concealed in those cigarettes many of which on their own, when someone who is Diabetic is exposed, are known to severely complicate Type 2 Diabetes. And the fact also is that there has never once been a study on the health effects of smoking tobacco by itself – no contaminants, no additives, no reconstituted tobacco waste – just pure leaf. Never one research study. There are thousands of research studies of pesticides and human health, but zero on inhaling pesticides from cigarettes. None. There hasn’t even been a study on pesticide contaminants in cigarettes since around 1970 when the Tobacco Cartel realized they had a big problem and chose to conceal it.

You can browse a few examples of the surviving tobacco/cigarette pesticide research that virtually ended in the 1970s here  and  here  and here  and here and here. You will not find anything similar in the past 50 years. Neither the Cartel nor the US government want smokers to have a clue. Nothing to see here. Move along.

But before we get to that let’s fact-check that statement on the concealed pesticides in Marlboros and while we’re at it let’s check a few other brands too.

Here are hard data showing the fungicides and insecticides found in Marlboro cigarettes and other brands pulled off-the-shelf from area mini-marts by professional lab staff using randomized selection – I didn’t select the tobacco products to be tested – during 2018 lab tests of major US cigarette brands for my book “Smoke No Evil”. The lab I used is highly qualified to test for pesticide residues on commercial tobacco substrate due to its EU corporate parentage. The choice of USDA certified organic tobacco as the reference substrate was the lab’s decision, as was the inclusion of American Spirit Blues in the product selection. Here’s what the lab found – and here’s what any Federal regulatory agency could find anytime they looked.

It may be easy to just scan and dismiss that list, especially things labelled “trace”, but please slow down – each one of these pesticides has its own set of impacts on areas of special concern to Diabetics like glucose metabolism, inflammation, neuropathy, and other critical health issues for Diabetics. You can prove this for yourself.

Try this little exercise. Search the name of any of these pesticides plus any diabetic condition or complication together at random  – “Azoxystrobin and neurotoxicity” for example, or “Bifenthrin and glucose”, or “Chlorantraniliprole and neurological”, or “ Penconazole and testicular”, or “ Fluopicolide and nephrotoxicity” or “Trifloxystrobin and neuropathy“.

Just poke around with whatever “Name of Marlboro pesticide/Diabetic symptom/condition” combinations interest you. By the way, those are random combinations above – try your own pesticide/condition combinations too, and please keep this research in mind while you browse:

“After reviewing 21 previous studies, researchers found exposure to any type of pesticide was associated with a 61 percent increased risk for any type of diabetes. The increased risk for type 2 diabetes — the most common type — was 64 percent, the investigators found.”

https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20150916/pesticide-exposure-tied-to-diabetes-risk

Just poke around in the science. No need to deep-dive at first – you’ll quickly get a sense of how broad this problem really is – and this is just set of pesticides from one brand. Other brands have very different pesticide profiles, and each insecticide and fungicide has very different impacts on Diabetes – much of it not yet studied. But with the search strategy above you can easily browse the already-known effects of exposure to the multiple highly bioactive pesticides that every Diabetic Marlboro smoker is inhaling +/-600 times a day – if they’re just a pack-a-day smoker.

Even more stunning when you think about it – not one doctor treating any Diabetic patient who smokes is aware that they are inhaling this incredible pesticide cocktail every day, because not one research study has ever been published on the subject, and there has never been a medical journal article raising even the possibility that this could be a problem for smokers. Research in this area has been completely absent from the world’s journals for over 50 years – although there is plenty of research on the consequences of exposure to pesticides – exposure to many of these pesticides alone, much less in combination, is known to lead to Type 2 and then if a Diabetic is exposed to make their Type 2 symptoms much worse. There’s plenty of research on that, but nothing on pesticides in cigarettes. Could this be a simple oversight? Oops – missed that one.

Not bloody likely – right? Here are examples of the kind of cigarette pesticide research that suddenly disappeared after the early 1970s, when the Tobacco Cartel realized what it all meant, you can browse a few examples of surviving tobacco/cigarette pesticide research here  and  here  and here  and here and here. All the Billions of dollars spent on “Smoking & Health” research and not one single study that simply compares smoking tobacco without pesticide contaminants with smoking contaminated tobacco products. Not even one study anywhere that said – “Hey, just for fun and because it’s dead simple to do, let’s just see what kinds of pesticide residues smokers are inhaling from these brands of cigarettes.” Not once.

This means of course that any complications of Diabetes symptoms due to this 100% preventable pesticide exposure are also 100% hidden from the Doctor’s view and can’t be detected much less diagnosed or appropriately treated. It also means the Diabetic smoker can’t make a fully informed decision about their own options. Very few smokers know there are organic tobacco product options, or why organic tobacco matters dramatically to their health and quality of life. With everything lumped together under “smoking” it’s impossible for a smoker or their doctor to be aware of the potentially hugely important differences between smoking tobacco with and without pesticide contamination – everything else kept the same.

So its also important to note that while we found ten Marlboro fungicides and pesticides above the level of detection, the fact is that in every cigarette brand there will always be dozens of other residues below those levels. (See the section at the end of this post for a long, long list of bioactive insecticidal and fungicidal chemicals known to be widely used on tobacco and known to leave residues.)

So if you’re wondering why its important that there are pesticide residues even below the levels of detection, let’s get a common mis-conception out of the way – that the size of the dose matters. That’s just in case anyone is tempted to say “Oh look here, that’s only a small amount of those pesticides, just a little trace, less than we can even detect. That little bit might kill tiny bugs, but how much damage could that infinitely small amount of pesticide do to a human?” 

Please check this link: solid new neurotoxicology science tells us that a trace is all it takes for many new pesticides to perform exactly as designed. They don’t depend on dosage for firepower. They are 100% stealthy by design and even a few molecules on-target on-time will do the job on any endocrine system or any nervous system or any reproductive system of any living creature. Oh, and a blend of those designer supertoxins … what do you suppose they do to human beings when they’re all working together, like they’re supposed to? Nobody knows because nobody has ever imagined that anyone would be inhaling these insecticide/fungicide combinations, at any level.

Toxicology

“Toxic effects of pesticide mixtures at a molecular level: their relevance to human health”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22728724/

The widely-held message in the toxicology science literature is that many if not most pesticides do their damage at molecular levels, far below the limits of detection, and science has demonstrated in the case of many of these pesticides that the classic dose-response model doesn’t apply, so dismissing pesticide contamination of tobacco products as a minor issue because of dosage is counter-factual. 

This also ignores the fact that, for example, even the tiny concentrations of some of these pesticides on the tobacco in the brands we first tested in 2018 FAR EXCEEDED allowable limits on any other consumable food or food product. That Azoxystrobin in Marlboros is way over limits for food, but you don’t inhale broccoli or catfish, right? Besides, your gut can handle a lot more than your lungs, and your gut is set up to protect your body from neurotoxins but your lungs are a wide-open pathway to every vital organ – no barriers.

In fact, you don’t inhale pesticides into your lungs from any other consumer product; contaminated food and drink go through your digestive system and produce completely different outcomes from the same pesticide inhaled. For example, eating DDT isn’t an issue unless it is at very very high levels – almost by the spoonful. But even a trace of inhaled DDT goes straight into your bloodstream where it heads straight for your organs, glands, nervous system and DNA. (No, we didn’t find DDT in Marlboros, but we found enormous concentrations in Swisher Sweets.)

Bottom line – those fungicides and insecticides you see in the data above are severely damaging the health of the 2.5 million diabetics who are smoking Marlboros regardless of any damage the tobacco in those cigarettes may or may not be doing to them too. 

Thing is – this damage from the insecticides and fungicides is 100% preventable, simply and easily.

So What Can A Diabetic Smoker Do Besides Quit?

Like almost all cigarette smokers most Diabetics want to quit, but like all smokers most of them who try simply can’t. They’ve tried, many times. It’s just too difficult. So like most non-Diabetic smokers they figure they just have to live with the damage their smoking does, although like all smokers they keep trying to quit or cut down or do something, anything. Nothing seems to work so they keep smoking cigarettes that keep exposing them to these hidden pesticides, that nobody knows are there, that are doing who knows how much of the harm, and causing who knows how much of the suffering, completely independent of any actual “tobacco” that may be in their Marlboro cigarette. 

That’s pure tragedy. If they only knew that they don’t have to stop smoking to stop inhaling pesticides, which is even more important for Diabetics than for non-Diabetic smokers. A simple switch to organic tobacco cigarettes or RYO and they wouldn’t be inhaling pesticides when they fired up.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/diseases/diabetes.html

100% 0f the damage to their Diabetic state being caused by hidden, unregulated pesticides in their Marlboros is 100% preventable – they can easily and comfortably switch to organic tobacco cigarettes or organic tobacco RYO and completely eliminate that part of the damage from smoking. 

Would that be enough to make a difference? Go back and Google some of those Marlboro pesticide/Diabetes outcome combinations. Check out some of the links. Decide for yourself.

Doctors do know that Diabetics who continue to smoke do worse, and Diabetics are even discovering that vaping pure nicotine instead of smoking seems improve their condition a bit. Both doctors and patients think that’s because the patients aren’t smoking tobacco anymore, confusing tobacco with cigarettes as we’ve all been trained to do, but IMO it’s quite likely because they aren’t inhaling pesticides anymore. But why debate this – why not just try eliminating pesticides in your cigarette smoke and see how you do, for starters.

So Why Not Just Quit Smoking And Start Vaping?

A major ‘real-world’ problem with diabetic smokers substituting vaping for smoking is that vaping a cloud of flavored nicotine just isn’t the same as smoking a cigarette for most smokers. Even those who hate cigarettes and want to quit still actually enjoy the act of smoking, which is one of the strongest reasons so many Diabetic smokers can’t or won’t quit. I have never yet seen a research study that begins with the assumption that people like smoking tobacco and that’s the reason they find it so hard to quit – because they really don’t want to at the same time they really do. So what is it that smokers actually want to quit?

I think many smokers want to quit feeling bad but would like to keep smoking tobacco if they could. I think smokers want a tobacco cigarette that is just tobacco, grown without pesticides and made with only natural flavorings and ingredients. And additives.

Natural additives? Yes of course flavor and aroma additives – just not industrial chemical additives. Natural herbs and fruits and roots and barks and berries – definitely yes. Tobacco has been flavored with those things for thousands of years. The whole FDA thing about “Additives” is a hoax, just like the whole thing about “Warnings” is a hoax. As long as everyone is distracted arguing about mint nobody is going to start asking questions about Azoxystrobin or Penconazole.

Anyone remember the “Tar & Nicotine” hoohah? Anybody ever ask what “Tar” is? The short answer is – no. Technically it’s the condensed smoke of a cigarette, so would that include pesticide residues? If that “Tar” came from Kentucky Reference cigarettes it did, but nobody looked and nobody found, so it remains just “Tar”. Could there be a reason why all that stuff is just lumped together and called “Tar”? Maybe we’re supposed to nod and pass on by and say “Oh yeah, tar.” 

For those Marlboro smokers who don’t care to be manipulated a moment longer here’s a simple little experiment – starting tomorow, switch to pesticide-free organic tobacco cigarettes for one month and see how you feel and what your numbers look like. Don’t change anything else you’re doing – just change from whatever cigarette brand you’re smoking to an organic brand. 

American Spirit Organic cigarettes are a convenient widely available choice — BUT none of their “natural tobacco” brands are organic tobacco and they are NOT free of insecticides and fungicides.  If you decide to free yourself from what pesticides in cigarettes are doing to your health then choose only Americn Spirit organic cigarettes or, better yet, organic American Spirit Roll Your Own (RYO).

So far I have only been able to test one American Spirit brand and while it was less contaminated than several other brands I was able to test, only the American Spirit USDA certified organic tobacco brand is free of pesticides. Calling the other Americn Spirit brands ‘natural’ appears to be a statement of fact but its actually meaningless as far as eliminating your exposure to tobacco product pesticides. Only “USDA Organic” tobacco, no matter what the brand (and I hope there will soon be many choices) is free of those pesticide residues that Marlboro smokers are currently inhaling 600 times a day or more.

Smokers can also buy organic tobacco online and roll their own cigarettes, which is a great way to be able to combine organic tobacco with organic CBD or THC Cannabis, for example, but for a Diabetic smoker who simply wants to try the effects of eliminating inhaled pesticides from their life for a month, pre-rolled American Spirit Organic cigarettes are the obvious choice of convenience. 

Turn your back on the propaganda, check out the science, think for yourself and try switching to organic tobacco, and see how you’re feeling in about a week. Then watch your numbers for a month. Then share what you’ve learned with others.

BONUS SECTION

If you really want to deep dive into the connection between Diabetes symptoms and conditions here’s a pretty confidential list (from a private lab) of most or all the pesticides that various US agencies say are OK to use on tobacco – and then never test for at all in any way in cigarettes. Not all of these are currently in use on US tobacco but worldwide there are all these and many more being used on tobacco that winds up in cigarettes. You’ll be hard-pressed to find this list in any US Government agency publication. This is not information that anyone, government or Tobacco Cartel, want you to have.

This table shows two Federal agencies approving of and regulating pesticides used on tobacco crops, but we know they never test tobacco products for those same pesticides to see what smokers are being exposed to. These pesticides are all approved by EPA, USDA and others for use on tobacco in the US, but not a single one was ever tested for its health effects when inhaled prior to or after its approval for use on tobacco crops. Every one of those pesticides you see in Marlboros was approved with ZERO testing of its health impact when inhaled – which is of course the ONLY way that tobacco is used. Oh, right – chewing tobacco. There’s plenty of science on what happens to mucosal tissue when its chronically exposed to pesticides, and of course the pesticides in that chewing tobacco are absorbed very efficiently. They are also absorbed 100% – none have been combusted by smoking, so all the pesticides in a wad of chew are available to enter blood and lymph. And neither smokers nor chewers, nor pipe nor cigar smokers, nor blunt rollers, are never told that they are in danger and have a choice – not a hint, never. The doctors don’t know either – everybody is dead certain, without the question ever being asked, that its smoking tobacco that’s sickening and killing people and they never go one step further.

There’s been a lot of money spent over the years to ensure that nobody ever thinks to take that line of reasoning another step. Of course its the tobacco. Everybody knows that.

Please keep in mind that many of these residues will never show up even if tobacco products are tested for them because they will be present below the limit of detection. However, as the science proves as you saw earlier, and is proving more every day, many of them are highly bioactive at even the molecular level. Still when you Google any of them in combination with any of the main Diabetic conditions I’m quite certain you may very well wonder why this information has never once been investigated in over 50 years of progress in Smoking & Health Research.

For example, check here’s one of the first links that come up when you search the first pesticide on the list “methamidophos” along with “diabetes”. You won’t hit every time – not every pesticide has been researched for its impact on Diabetes, and in the pesticide approval process nobody asks that question. Probably just an oversight, right? After all, how many people are going to be inhaling methamidophos along with dozens of others on this list? Where would anyone encounter methamidosphos in a normal everyday environment? Hmmm.

40 million or so American smokers and about a Billion people worldwide, that’s who. Oh, and their children if Mommy smokes, and 25% of women who smoke keep right on smoking through pregnancy. So that’s what – a couple of hundred million children born after being exposed to pesticides 24/7 throughout their development.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12640-017-9750-9?shared-article-renderer

So now check out the pesticide cocktail ingredients a one-pack smoker is inhaling 600X a day.

Table I:   Percent recoveries for pesticides included in the EPA approved list and USDA monitoring list for tobacco determined using QuEChERS extraction, dSPE cleanup, and GCxGC-TOFMS analysis.

https://www.restek.com/Technical-Resources/Technical-Library/Foods-Flavors-Fragrances/fff_FFAN1823-UNV

		500 ppb Fortified Sample  (100 pg on-column)		50 ppb Fortified Sample  (10 pg on-column)
Pesticide	Regulatory  List*	50 mg PSA,  50 mg C18,  50 mg GCB	25 mg PSA,  7.5 mg GCB		50 mg PSA,  50 mg C18,  50 mg GCB	25 mg PSA,  7.5 mg GCB
Methamidophos	USDA	77	83		72	89
Dichlorvos		95	101		74	109
1,2,3,5-Tetrachlorobenzene		70	82		68	85
Mevinphos	USDA	89	101		103	112
Acephate	EPA/USDA	93	87		69	105
Pentachlorobenzene		49	75		45	76
o-Phenylphenol		94	100		91	96
Tetrachloronitrobenzene		74	93		90	93
Omethoate	USDA	97	91		76	96
2,3,5,6-Tetrachloroaniline		75	92		64	92
alpha-BHC		92	94		90	99
Hexachlorobenzene	USDA	21	61		18	63
Pentachloroanisole		59	80		58	84
Dimethoate	USDA	100	102		85	91
beta-BHC		96	94		82	92
Pentachloronitrobenzene		61	85		56	73
Pentachlorobenzonitrile		46	90		40	84
gamma-BHC		94	95		86	94
Chlorothalonil		59	80		53	77
Anthracene		96	107		103	106
Diazinon	EPA/USDA	88	96		98	77
delta-BHC		95	94		97	103
Pentachloroaniline		43	82		41	84
Vinclozolin		95	97		110	83
Carbaryl	EPA	94	95		79	100
Metalaxyl	EPA/USDA	100	98		166	78
Pentachlorothioanisole		21	67		30	70
Pirimiphos methyl		93	93		78	85
Methiocarb		93	95		85	92
Dichlofluanid		86	90		77	88
Malathion	EPA	98	94		93	132
Chlorpyrifos	EPA/USDA	83	91		77	83
Fenthion	USDA	93	88		78	97
DCPA		94	97		76	85
Parathion	USDA	89	100		112	98
Cyprodinil		51	92		73	127
Heptachlor epoxide	USDA	87	91		91	88
Thiabendazole		50	94		51	150
Captan	USDA	91	77		ND	ND
Folpet		84	90		67	66
Procymidone		94	95		83	99
Endosulfan I	EPA/USDA	75	87		61	100
Imazalil		108	101		ND	ND
4,4′-DDE	USDA	67	76		58	71
Dieldrin	USDA	75	83		76	101
Myclobutanil		96	98		112	94
Endrin	USDA	75	87		87	106
Endosulfan II	EPA/USDA	92	93		101	91
Oxadixyl		97	91		83	172
4,4′-DDD	USDA	80	100		83	74
2,4′-DDT	USDA	71	76		66	78
Carfentrazone ethyl		99	122		117	114
Endosulfan sulfate	EPA/USDA	94	97		74	94
Fenhexamid		123	103		81	111
4,4′-DDT	USDA	76	79		72	74
Propargite		88	100		107	57
Piperonyl butoxide		86	99		99	86
Iprodione		96	105		81	88
Bifenthrin		73	72		68	75
Dicofol		75	57		ND	50
Fenpropathrin		82	98		107	75
Phosalone		83	95		78	79
Azinphos methyl		99	94		ND	ND
cis-Permethrin	USDA	70	84		66	71
Coumaphos		59	88		46	132
trans-Permethrin	USDA	85	90		74	74
Cypermethrin	USDA	85	105		ND	ND
Pyraclostrobin		75	95		66	62
Fluvalinate		84	97		143	94
Difenoconazole		88	89		110	104
Deltamethrin		79	84		53	63
Azoxystrobin		102	104		73	99
* EPA approved list and USDA monitoring list