“(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.“
Presumably if the tolerance was zero, like with totally banned DDT and many of the other pesticides you see in the data below, then the law would apply. Zero tolerance, right? No US manufacturer can use foreign-grown tobacco contaminated with DDT, and many of the other pesticide residues you see here like Carbendazim – totally banned in the EU. So what’s this data and why has FDA allowed this illegal and dangerous exposure to go on for years without a single move to intervene? I know for a fact that they know exactly what is happening, and I’ll leave it to you to decide why the FDA, CDC, EPA, FTC and every other government agency refuses to regulate the Tobacco Cartel’s products.
Who’s smoking those Swisher Sweets, and why do you suppose the diabetes, obesity and hypertension in those communities are so extreme?
Search “exposure” to any of the pesticides in that table along with keywords diabetes, obesity or hypertension and you’ll find out. And here’s one clue as to where that DDT is going and what it’s doing to smokers.
“Correlates of organochlorine pesticide plasma concentrations among reproductive-aged black women“
“… prospective cohort study of Black women aged 23–35 years from the Detroit, Michigan metropolitan area (enrolled 2010–2012), examined correlates of plasma concentrations of the following OCPs: dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,pʹ-DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), oxychlordane, and trans-nonachlor.”
“Current smoking was associated with 10–19% higher plasma concentrations of all four OCPs, and was highest for current smokers of ≥10 cigarettes/day (% differences ranged from 22 to 29%).”
This group of young Black women smokers is exactly the target market for the Swisher Sweets you see in the data above.
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In case this situation has your attention you may be interested in looking into it further. Here are some of my recent posts linking the data to published research on the results of chronic exposure to these pesticides.
This post offers hard evidence and historic documentation of the conspiratorial role of Federal agencies in concealing the health threat to smokers created by unregulated pesticide exposure
This post offers a look at the historical origins of today’s breast cancer, diabetes and obesity epidemics in the trans-generational impact of DDT and Organochlorine pesticide contaminants in cigarettes 1950-1972, and the current state of DDT in tobacco products in 2021
This post links new hard data on pesticide contaminants in cigarettes with the elevated health risks this creates for Diabetic smokers, and the simple strategy that individual smokers can use to eliminate the threat.
A radical “quit smoking” plan that will probably offend a lot of non-smokers but that could help a lot of Diabetic smokers quit hurting themselves without having to quit.
This post links hard data on DDT in Swisher Sweets brand of little cigars, smoked by millions of young women, with peer-reviewed published research on pre-natal genetic damage to the baby
This post links hard data on hidden fungicides in tobacco brands popular in marginalized communities with peer-reviewed published research that demonstrates that exposure to these same fungicides is strongly associated with testicular cancer
Any exposure to several of the pesticides shown to contaminate tobacco products are proven to have greater impact on babies with Latinx, African American, American Indian and Pacific Island genetics.
Could the unexplained link between smoking and suicide be explained by the known link between pesticide exposure and suicide, once you become aware of the concealed pesticide contamination in cigarettes?
There’s nothing spontaneous if a young smoker loses her baby because the insecticides and fungicides in her cigarettes have interrupted fetal development creating ‘non-viable offspring’ doing to her what they are designed to do to bugs.
When a pregnant woman is exposed to DDT during a critical time window in her female baby’s development that female baby will have 4X greater risk of developing breast cancer if she is Black or Brown-skinned.
Once you know about the hidden pesticides communities can use existing toxic substances laws to ban the most dangerous brands and force compliance by the rest.
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 aspecial set of severe hazardsfrom 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.”
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.”
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 1970shere 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.”
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”
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.
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.
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.
New Harvard Medical School research that says that for every10 nanograms of DDT per gram of serum in a pregnant mother’s blood her chances of a spontaneous abortion rise 17%. I will show you how a young smoker reaches that level of DDT in her blood after only a few weeks of smoking one or two Swisher Sweets little cigars a day, and the hard science that says her risk of losing a baby just builds from there.
This might seem academic to most of us because DDT has been banned worldwide for nearly 70 years, so how could a pregnant girl or woman possibly be exposed to enough DDT to cause her to lose her baby? And how could this be happening to many thousands of young women without anyone being aware of it?
I will show you hard facts, straightforward calculations and hyperlinks to the published science just below. I’ll show you exactly how this is happening right now and why a single Tobacco product, Swisher Sweets, smoked every day in America by hundreds of thousands of young girls and women, mainly Black and Brown and poor, is very likely causing hundreds of thousands of these deceptively named “Spontaneous Abortions”. I don’t see these children’s lives cut short by a manufacturer’s greed and negligence as ‘spontaneous’ anything. – do you? This is mass poisoning caused by, at best, the extreme greed and negligence of the manufacturer and by knowing and deliberate dereliction of duty by legislators and regulators.
This destruction of unborn human life isn’t spontaneous at all. The DDT contaminating this one brand alone, not to mention all the other nerve, hormone, and DNA toxins present, is a crime against people on the same scale as any war of aggression or genocide.
The crime being committed here is happening in what history shows us is the most invisible of all places – in plain sight.
I’ll show you hard data just below that demonstrates that every Swisher Sweet little cigar a young girl or woman smokes delivers @163 nanograms of DDT to the smoker’s blood. Because DDT is so persistent in her body, the amount of illegal, banned worldwide DDT in one Swisher Sweet a day can increase her chances of miscarrying the baby by over 200% before she even knows she’s pregnant or, far more tragic, can result in a mentally and physically damaged baby at birth.
Roughly two million women, mostly young, African-American, Latin American and Native American smoke Swisher Sweets regularly which puts them at high risk of spontaneous abortion and miscarriage early in any pregnancy because of the DDT they are inhaling with every fruity little puff. (See data tables below on how much and why)
We know that hundreds of thousands of these @2 million female Swisher Sweet smokers will get pregnant at least once before they are 25. The data suggest that perhaps 500,000 out of the 2 million of these smokers will get pregnant and lose their babies at least once before age 25, and most won’t even know it because it will happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy. That’s when DDT is most effective at destroying the rapidly dividing cells of early developing life -early in the pregnancy.
This public health atrocity is totally under the radar. Not a single public health authority seems to be aware of or addressing this threat. Nobody in the African American, Latin American or Native American communities seems to be aware of this connection, yet many people are acutely aware of its terrible consequences – birth defects, miscarriages, developmental problems. Countless little lives ruined from the outset – for what?
Could this at least partly explain why so many young women in marginalized communities, where sweet, fruity and minty smokes are so heavily promoted, suffer such high rates of spontaneous abortion and miscarriage?
The danger from the DDT alone is clear: there are multiple pathways by which just DDT alone damages and destroys human life at its early stages, and lots of impeccable scientific resources say the same.
Here’s the math. The 0.816 mg/kg found in the “Smoke No Evil” tests translates to 816,000 nanograms per kilogram of Swisher Sweets.
Since each little cigar is about 2 grams, that translates to 1634 nanograms of DDT that are potentially bioavailable to the smoker each time they smoke.
After combustion and inhalation, studies from the 1960s (before such research was suppressed) show that @ 10% of the DDT in cigarettes is inhaled by the smoker. So we can assume that smokers are absorbing @163 nanograms of the total DDT in each Swisher Sweet they smoke, that amount will enter the lungs and then the bloodstream of the smoker.
We also know that inhaled DDT in cigarette smoke stays inside the body tissues and doesn’t get exhaled or excreted unless there is radical weight loss, because it’s stored in fat cells that it causes the body to make. That’s the link to obesity. Those same 1960s studies looked at the amount of DDT exhaled and it turned out to be virtually none. 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.
So bottom line is that with each little cigar, another +/-163 nanograms of DDT will enter the bloodstream of the girl or women smoker. As noted above, we know that for every 10 nanograms of DDT per gram of serum in her blood, her chances of a spontaneous abortion will rise by 17%.
We know that an average woman will have 300-400 grams of serum in her 5 liters or so of blood, and we know that DDT is bio-accumulative. A steady smoker will be increasing her total nanograms of DDT per gram of blood serum pretty quickly – with the excess steadily being stored in her fat. And if she doesn’t have enough fat her body will make more because the body is biologically compelled to store DDT in fat.
DDT targets living reproductive systems, and doesn’t discriminate between bugs and humans. It will abort babies regardless, and the more of it there is in the blood or tissues, the greater the likelihood of abortion. The world has been trying to remove DDT from contact with humans, and particularly developing human life, for generations. This Swisher Sweets company, part and parcel of the entire Tobacco Cartel, has such a gross disregard for human life that its actions are far more than negligent; they are criminal on the scale of crimes against humanity. There is intent here, and conspiracy.
Smokers can continue to smoke without DDT and the other fungicides, insecticides, nerve poisons and hormone disruptors. Tobacco can be grown and tobacco products can be manufactured naturally, responsibly, and organically. American Spirit organic cigarettes prove this indisputably. The fact that there are nearly 200 commercial-scale organic tobacco farms in Virginia alone proves this indisputably – again.
This atrocity is 100% the result of government agency and legislative cowardice and negligence, criminal corporate greed, and what looks to me like a clear eugenics agenda.
This post is to share hard factual evidence connecting hidden and unregulated pesticide contaminants in Swisher Sweets like DDT, Carbendazim, and Cypermethrin, and the multiple terrible birth defects like holoprosencephaly these so-called “Tobacco products” are inflicting on the children and even grandchildren of smokers. I’ll provide more links below to published journal research that connects Black, Brown and Native American birth defects with these hidden and unregulated pesticides in tobacco products. First a brief look at why these pesticides are doing such damage.
One all too-common, pesticide-caused birth defect (1 in 250 embryos) occurs when a developing embryo’s “Sonic Hedgehog Gene” is attacked and damaged by specific pesticides. In spite of its weird name. this gene is a true Mother Gene – it controls the creation of the human body from the time the embryo is only a few dividing cells. It does this by secreting a complex protein called “Sonic Hedgehog” that guides the developing embryo through all the incredibly complex cell divisions it takes for the embryo to become a human being instead of a fish or a cat or a firefly. This Mother Gene secretes just right version of the Sonic Hedgehog protein at the right moment to biochemically message the right cells in the developing embryo – “hey – become two eyes right there”, “OK – make five fingers here and here”, and “Listen up – become a brain stem!” – important little details like that. When it all goes right, a wonderful healthy human baby is born.
When pesticides attack this gene, the crucial Sonic Hedgehog protein is damaged, and some of the cellular pathways to becoming fully human are now destroyed for that baby, who will never be whole even if they are born at all.
When a young girl or woman smokes a commercial cigarette or little cigar, specific pesticides known to attack and destroy the Sonic Hedgehog gene in human embryos flood her system and circulate in her blood. That’s the simple reality. What happens to that developing baby then is pretty straight science, which I’ll show you. First, to set the stage, here are the pesticides in Swisher Sweets and other tobacco product brands known to attack, damage and destroy the Sonic Hedgehog gene.
The Sonic Hedgehog” gene controls human “morphogenesis” – literally the creation, or genesis of the human body. This gene is responsible for creating the body of the baby from the first instant out of those first few cells that start dividing and becoming. We know for sure that the Sonic Hedgehog can be damaged and destroyed by very low levels of the pesticides that we also know for sure are hidden contaminants of Swisher Sweets. Every pesticide listed above attacks and damages the human embryo’s Sonic Hedgehog gene; imagine the impact when they all attack at once, like a frenzied pack of wild dogs, with every puff.
Now The Really Damaging Connection
BUT – its not enough that the pesticides in Swishers attack the Sonic Hedgehog to directly cause this terrible birth defect. Holoprosencephaly also is caused by maternal diabetes – in fact a Mom with diabetes is 200X more likely to have a damaged baby.
And guess what – pesticide exposure is very strongly linked to Diabetes, and smokers have a very high rate of Diabetes. (more links below) So the DDT and Carbendazim and the other hidden, unregulated fungicides and insecticides attack the baby’s Mother Gene directly, and also cause Mom to have Diabetes, which also attacks the Mother Gene. That baby and mother are at totally preventable terminal risk.
“We now know that smoking causes type 2 diabetes.” (CDC)
Notice that CDC says ‘smoking’ not ‘smoking tobacco’ – that’s just a small example of the duplicity of these agencies. Here’s why:
If “smoking” includes inhaling pesticides, then duh. We already know for sure that exposure to pesticides causes Type 2 Diabetes. But CDC never mentions pesticides in ‘tobacco’ products. Never. At all. CDC wants everyone to connect ‘smoking’ and ‘diabetes” without knowing anything about ‘pesticides’ in tobacco products. If smokers did know, then pesticide exposure causing Type 2 Diabetes could easily avoided by switching to organic tobacco products until/if quitting became an option. But CDC evidently wants people to either quit or die.
So here’s what that Diabetic pregnant Mom who loves her Swishers is carefully conditioned by Swisher’s expensive, heavy advertising and their planted street memes to think is coming ….
But here is what may actually be coming. With apologies for the shocking images – do you see any cute little Swisher babies here?
In a Swisher Smokin’ Mommy, DDT and all those other insecticides and fungicides you see in the Swishers data will be circulating in her blood at exactly the right moment to damage her baby’s Sonic Hedgehog. That DDT is bioaccumulative too, so it builds up in her tissues. It will eventually likely cause breast cancer. It is also an obesogen, so it will definitely make her fatter because DDT needs fat cells for storage.
So every young Swisher smoker’s blood is always full of DDT and a dozen other neurotoxic pesticides, all ready to target any new embryo’s Sonic Hedgehog gene. There are @ 2 million young girls and women just in the US who smoke Swishers regularly. Every one is at severe risk. It doesn’t matter if she’s pregnant right now – as long as she keeps smoking, that little Sonic Hedgehog is toast any time it pops up its little head.
Not surprisingly, birth defects associated with exposure of fetal life to neurotoxic pesticides are extremely high in marginalized communities, where high proportions of young women smoke tobacco products like Swisher Sweets, that are highly contaminated with many of exactly the same pesticides known to cause these terribly damaged babies.
Because nobody since roughly 1968 has published research on pesticides in tobacco products, and since my 2018 “Smoke No Evil” data is still unknown, at least one highly probable cause of holoprosencephaly in the children of smokers in these marginalized and exploited communities isn’t realized by anyone and therefore can’t begin to be be addressed. Here’s some pretty simple hard evidence – don’t you think this might be worth some Public Health attention?
The “Sonic Hedgehog” was named by the quirky scientists who discovered it in the early 80s. This gene basically regulates key processes in the developing embryo all the way from when it’s deciding whether to become a frog or a human and then when it’s deciding how many fingers and eyes to grow and where to put them, and so on. The Sonic HedgeHog gene does all this by sending coded biochemical messages to all the millions of cells whose growth has to be coordinated so they become that first cute little baby you see above – the mythical “Swisher Baby”.
Not all Sonic Hedgehog damage is terminally tragic – since 1 in 250 human embryos experience some level of damage there are many babies born who go on to lead their lives while carrying the burden laid upon them before they were born. Like these young people. Do any of them or their brothers and sisters in victimhood live in your community? Would you like to see this tragedy end? There is a simple solution. Force tobacco product manufacturers to remove pesticide residues from their products. That’s it. Forget any issues with tobacco, nicotine, or smoking. Deal with the pesticides first, then see what happens to young people who smoke pesticide-free tobacco. I have a pretty good hunch what we’ll find.
And as you and I cringe at the images and try to deal with the idea that this is being done to children every day in order to extract money from them, we have to remember that this massive lifelong suffering is the consequence of the reckless act of profit-hungry manufacturers acting with certain knowledge that their product is contaminated with these pesticides. By virtue of their industry position, and their membership in CORESTA, they either know or ought to know the consequences of inhalation of the pesticides that contaminate their tobacco products. They ought also to be aware that the genetics of Black, Latinx and Native American people are particularly vulnerable – and of course, they are. The Tobacco industry calls young Black and Brown kids “replacement smokers” and that’s exactly what they are – replacements.
This is an industry so ready for accountability – once there is even a little crack in their dam of silence it will explode with worldwide genocide trials and global confiscation of assets that will reach into some of the wealthiest families and institutions in the world. After all, Tobacco wealth built America and much of the rest of the “modern” world. Those massively wealthy families are still there, invisible, protected – they think. I may not see it, but their time of accountability will come. The evidence is just too strong and too vast, although still too hidden with vast cleverness in plain sight. When the world can see the extent of the Tobacco wealth built on a hundreds of years of the exploitation, suffering and death of smokers then literally trillions in hoarded Tobacco treasure will be surfaced and can be reclaimed for the public good. It is wasted, unproductive privately held and stoutly protected wealth, supporting the indulgent worthless lives of largely incompetent unroductive people with love only for themselves. This ill-gotten gain, going back decades, has left a trail of evidence in spite of its very very best efforts. It’s the 50 year total gap in research that gives away the Tobacco industry’s screaming nightmare concern. It was around 1972 when the lid was clamped on hard and universally on cigarette pesticide research, around the world and not just in the US. And boy are those early studies out of NCSU an eye-opener on what pesticides smokers were inhaling in the 1950s and 60s. These are the same folks who, if they haven’t yet died of “smoking related disease”, are dying now from all those years of inhaling what you see in these long buried old reports. 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.
Every organochlorine in the book was present in cigarettes of the period, and the organophosphates were coming on heavy then too. (Remember that in 1960s detection technology was not well-developed.) The level of contamination has only gotten worse in the years since the industry clamped down on research, and my “Smoke No Evil” tests in 2018 strongly suggest.
Then after the early 1970s – nothing. It all stopped – the data, not the pesticides. There had been dozens of studies from the early 1950s through the 60s at NCSU and elsewhere documenting high concentrations of these incredible supertoxins – and suddenly oops – that all stopped. That’s the smoking gun – no research on pesticides in cigarettes anywhere on earth since the industry realized what the data actually showed. It showed neurotoxic, carcinogenic, genotoxic levels of multiple pesticides, dozens of them in fact, that smokers were inhaling every puff. Not one more study, when the tobacco industry continued to be the largest user of pesticides per acre of any crop on earth. Nada. That says pure, coordinated, global conspiracy to me – how about you? In case you missed this earlier, 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.
I hope that I’ve been able to help bring a reckoning to those at the top of this cold, inhuman conspiracy. I have only a few treasured illusions, like for instance that you, dear reader, may be in a position to pick up the phone and make something begin to happen. Maybe a nice little class action lawsuit on behalf of any one of the very identifiable classes of people whose lives have been irreparably damaged by the conspirators. And by the way, responsibility and accountability for this slow-rolling, trans-generational atrocity includes all the Federal agencies who have known the cold, hard facts since the research was shut down – they’ve chosen to lie, dissimulate and keep silent for decades, either out of fear or greed – hard to say. Their only “Report” on tobacco pesticides in the early 2000s was a puke on American smokers and their families, designed to shield the tobacco industry, period. I’m just an old guy sitting at a little desk early on a cold morning in Portland Oregon writing these words that I hope will be heard like the prayer they are meant to be. So thank you dear reader for picking this up and reading it all the way to the end of the line.
Young people in Black, Native American and Latinx communities are Swisher Sweets’ prime target markets. The company spends enormous sums luring and cultivating young people in these communities. and although many young people who smoke Swishers already suspect they are probably cheap shit, what nobody could possibly suspect is that they are loaded with nerve agents descended directly from those used by the Nazis to gas millions of humans. These Nazi neurotoxins are doing now just what they did then then – targeting marginalized people.
In recent lab tests we found the supertoxin DDT in Swisher Sweets at 700X the max concentration found in any other product anywhere. Everywhere else DDT is found its left over in the soil from 50 years ago. In Swisher Sweets it’s fresh, recent, and incredibly concentrated. And as you see, DDT is just one of the neurotoxins in Sweets. I’ll show you data and give you the links to journal research as this post goes along. Here’s an example
Potential role of organochlorine pesticides in the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative, and neurobehavioral disorders:
“The growing body of evidence has demonstrated that prenatal exposure to organochlorines (OCs) is associated with impairment of neuropsychological development. It has been suggested that maternal exposure to OCPs results in impaired motor and cognitive development in newborns and infants. Moreover, in utero exposure to these compounds contributes to the etiology of autism.”
So this post is about offering you direct evidence of what that DDT and the other hidden neurotoxins are doing to young Black, Brown and Native American people whose genetics are highly vulnerable to DDT and the other neurotoxins and whose families and communities are being devastated by these hidden neurotoxins. The impact of tobacco product neurotoxins may be disguised in epidemics of other things like diabetes, drug addiction, ADHD and Autism, suicide and alcoholism.
For example, in utero exposure of a developing baby to a cocktail of DDT, Carbendazim and Azole fungicides at specific critical periods in development is proven to lead to a range of terrible neurological damage, so a pregnant young girl or woman smoking a few Swishers a day guarantees that this cocktail of neurotoxins will be there in her blood ready to find her baby in the womb at just the right moment for horror to occur.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The industry can produce beautiful, naturally sweet tobacco cigars made with responsibly grown and even organic tobaccos, but they aren’t the immense and super-easy profits that can be made using crap tobacco that’s been doused with unregulated chemicals to keep the bugs and worms away. Moreover, because the “tobacco” in these things is the cheapest of the cheap and can’t be made into anything else it has to be flavored to gross levels to cover up the poison so – pile on the Banana, Mango and Rum flavors! Cool!
Black, Indigenous and Brown people have been getting the low end of everything forever but Swisher Sweets are way far down the chute through which White shit is rained down onto these exploited communities.
Here’s a bigger image of that list of nerve agents, DNA toxins, and other instruments of genocide for profit marketed to Black and Brown youth.
You might be horrified at how deep this goes – and “science” has no idea that Swisher Sweets and every other brand of tobacco product is pumping this “cocktail” into young boys and girls, and pregnant women, 24/7 in every community of color, including Native American and Alaska Native communities where smoking is high, genetic vulnerability to neurochemicals is high, and while the damage is in plain sight its true cause is invisible.
“AI/ANs have the highest rate of disability of any racial and ethnic population in the United States. Twenty-two percent of the AI/AN population has one or more disabilities (approximately 550,000 individuals), which is the highest rate of disabilities when compared with all other races/ethnicities surveyed in the United States. (McNeil, 2001) Among children 5 to 15 years old, the disability rate is 5.7% for non-Hispanic Whites, but 7.0% for Black children and 7.7% for AI/AN children. Although the disability rate is16.2% for non- Hispanic Whites of working age (16 to 64), it is 26.4% for Blacks and 27.0% for AI/AN. (US Census Bureau, 2009)”
“ … our results align with prior studies that compared smokers of any mass-marketed cigar (eg, users of Black and Milds, Swisher Sweets, Phillies Blunts, Captain Black brands) with traditional large cigar smokers. Specifically, those who reported smoking nonpremium cigars, cigarillos or FCs tended to be younger, non-Hispanic black, have low educational attainment, live below 200% of the federal poverty line, and smoke cigars on a daily basis as compared with those who smoked premium cigars.“
Frontiers in Endocrinology, 21 March 2019 |
I hope the connection between neurochemicals in commercial tobacco products and disease and death among people in genetically-defined communities is becoming more clear, and more obviously worth investigating. The research is extensive – I’ve covered it in my book “Smoke No Evil”, so I’ll just include a few key references here to drive home the point that the DDT contamination alone makes Swisher Sweets a nerve gas assault on Black and Brown people in order to pry a few dollars out of them and to hell with the consequences. Nobody is ever going to connect Swisher Sweets to dead Black and Brown babies – right? Besides – those young pregnant women smoking Sweets have been warned – right? It says right there on the pack that they can kill you. So what’s the problem?
Well, how about this – keeping in mind that none of this has anything at all to do with damage that tobacco and nicotine may or may not do. This is about inhaling DDT, Carbendazim, mega-fungicides, and stull that nobody knows about because its only being used on tobacco.
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: Effects on Endocrine Glands
“Humans and other big mammals and top predators are at the top of food chain, therefore they may store larger doses of EDCs according to the process of bioaccumulation and bioamplification. These processes may generate a “cocktail” of effects with unknown consequences. “
“Indeed, lifelong exposure to multiple compounds may bring about cumulative, additive and/or synergic effects.“
“Dose-effect relationships can be complex for many EDCs causing diverging effects at different concentrations; moreover, different EDCs exert non-traditional responses to the dose due to the different action they can have in the binding of hormone receptors.“
“Last but not least, the complexity of the hazardous effects of EDCs includes the concept of windows of vulnerability; indeed, evidence shows that the timing of exposure is of primary importance in the assessment of the effects on the endocrine system.“
Now let’s get specific about that DDT that young Swisher smokers are inhaling every day.
In my research for “Smoke No Evil” 0.816 mg/kg of DDT p, p- was found in samples of Swisher Sweets. This is 250-350 times the highest concentrations found in any food tested by FDA “Total Diet Study 2017”.
This annual survey found the highest concentrations of (soil/water-residual) DDT in the US food chain was in potatoes @ 2.17 ng/g, and catfish filets @ 2.3 ng/g.
1000 ng = 1 mg so 1 ng/gram = 0.001 mg/kg
Thus, the levels expressed in the FDA “Total Diet Study” are the equivalent of 0.00217 mg/kg for potatoes and 0.0023 mg/kg for catfish.
This compares to 0.816 mg/kg in Swisher Sweets.
So from all sources in food and water, DDT intake has been dropping to near zero in the US – and since nobody tests tobacco products, nobody knows that daily intake of DDT alone is actually off the charts for smokers of many different brands.
Here’s what FDA & NIH pretend is happening – remember, they do know about pesticides in tobacco products, they’re just totally under political control from vast, hidden wealth that has historically found Eugenics a very attractive idea. After all, keeping communities of color sick and helpless while draining them of every possible dollar – that’s way too many rich White people’s dream scenario.
“Average adult intakes of DDT were estimated to be 62 µg/person/day in 1965 and 240 µg/person/day in 1970, before the DDT ban was instituted. The FDA Total Diet Studies show that the daily intakes have fallen since the ban, with daily intakes (for a 16-year-old, 70 kg male) averaging 6.51, 2.38, 1.49, and 0.97 µg/person/day for 1978–1979, 1979–1980, 1984–1986, and 1986–1991, respectively.” https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/chem_background/exsumpdf/ddt_508.pdf
“Based on all of the evidence available, the Department of Health and Human Services has determined that DDT is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.
Similarly, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that DDT is possibly carcinogenic to humans. EPA has determined that DDT, DDE, and DDD are probable human carcinogens. “
There are 816,000 nanograms/kilogram in Swisher Sweets, or 816 Nanograms per gram of Swisher Sweet. There are 2 grams of tobacco in Swisher Sweet, which means a teen smoker will be exposed to 1632 Nanograms of DDT per Swisher Sweet. Based on largely suppressed research from the 1950s, about 50% of the DDT/DDE on tobacco survives smoking and enters the smoker’s body. Some of this early research on DDT and OC pesticides in cigarettes can be found here and here and here and here andhere.
Four Sweets a day means 3200+ Nanograms being inhaled intact and ready to head for the placenta or ovaries, or 18X the acceptable daily intake. And by the way, that’s acceptable daily intake by eating/ingesting orally. DDT is FAR more toxic when it is inhaled, but nobody in the pesticide research community has ever imagined that DDT or any pesticide would be inhaled hundreds of times a day, every day, so nobody has ever looked at what would happen. Except that it is already happening, and very obvious. The 500,000 Americans, and 7,000,000 people worldwide who die every year from ‘smoking’ have been inhaling pesticides like DDT 100’s of time every day for years, and we say they are dying from “smoking”. Would they be dying of ‘smoking’ if the smoke were’t poisoned? Is tobacco alone actually killing all those people? Of course not. Let’s get real.
Further, this DDT is fresh, not impotent from spending 20 years in the soil. So the pregnant teen smoking a Swisher Sweet is flooding her baby with the good stuff, the best bug killer in the world, banned everywhere in the world since many generations before this young girl was born. So why is it even present in Swisher Sweets at all? It isn’t even soil residue from 50 year ago , its from a tobacco crop sprayer last year in Brazil. If this isn’t genocide in action, what is?
Please pardon the strange title – it’s just that these things are all connected in ways that I think may be important and I am pretty sure are being completely overlooked most importantly by people who smoke cigarettes or little cigars and are trying to recover from drug addiction or drinking, or maybe just trying to quit cigarettes.
I’ve been looking at a lot of journal-published toxicology research on pesticide exposure and its neurological and developmental consequences and I’m connecting some dots here that may point to a hidden issue that is particularly affecting alcoholics, addicts, and people in rehab and recovery.
Here are some of the dots I’m connecting – what do you think?
Here’s a Dot: Research shows that people chronically exposed to insecticides and fungicides in their work or environment experience crippling depression and commit suicide at many times “normal” rates
Here’s another Dot: Research shows that a very high % of addicts, alcoholics & people in rehab smoke cigarettes and cigars
Yet another Dot: First-ever research commissioned and published in 2018 shows that cigarettes and cigars are heavily contaminated with insecticides and fungicides but this is completely unknown and unaccounted-for in addiction research, while:
And a really BIG DOT: That research shows that people with a substance abuse disorder are nearly six times as likely to attempt suicide at some point in their life.
So (1) almost all addicts, alcoholics and people in rehab/recovery are inhaling insecticides and fungicides hundreds of times a day, and (2) they are committing suicide at six times the rate of non-smoking, non-addicted, non-drinking people, and (3) chronic pesticide exposure alone, by itself, increases suicide rates dramatically.
Check out this representative small sample of the published research.
suicide death (RR = 1.83; 95% CI: 1.64, 2.02; 14 studies; I2 = 49.7%; P = 0.018).”
“There is sufficient evidence that smoking is associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviors. Therefore, smoking is a contributing factor for suicide.”
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2019.; 61(4):314-317
Association Between Chronic Exposure to Pesticide and Suicide
“After adjusting for variables, participants exposed to pesticides had a 1.88-fold increased risk of suicide (HR, 1.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11 to 3.16) than those who were not exposed.”
“Study populations with greater pesticide use (HR, 2.42; 95% CI, 1.27 to 4.60) and pesticide addiction had the highest suicide rates (HR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.03 to 3.56).”
“Suicidal behavior is a significant problem for people with co-occurring disorders seeking addiction treatment. Several predisposing and precipitating risk factors such as marital and interpersonal relationship disruption, occupational and financial stressors, recent heavy substance use and intoxication as well as a history of previous suicide attempts and sexual abuse combine in an additive fashion with personality traits and mental illnesses to intensify risk for suicidal behavior in addiction patients.”
So with this research in mind, and if you’ve been connecting the dots along with me, please check out the insecticides and fungicides I found when I tested Marlboros and Swisher Sweets, among others. Remember, not one of these have been tested for their impact through inhalation, which is well-known as the most hazardous route of ingestion. Why should they? Nobody ever expected that any human being would be inhaling what you see below hundreds of times a day. Finally, please keep in mind that many of the insecticides and fungicides you see below are designed to work at the molecular level.
Literally just a couple of molecules of DDT or Carbendazim or an Azole fungicide hitting a human fetus at the wrong developmental point means high risk to virtually guaranteed genetic damage and a lifetime of potential neurological and hormonal diseases along with childhood and adult cancer and autism.
All this from just a few molecules – dose doesn’t matter with many of the newer neurochemicals, and even with the old standby DDT. A few molecules of DDT at 10-16 weeks, like if Mommy is smoking a Swisher Sweet or two a day, and that child may be severely damaged. I think I can say what the results would be of a study that looked at the children of mothers who smoked Swisher Sweets or any of the other highly contaminated “little cigars” before or during pregnancy. Swisher has been targeting young Black and Latina women for decades, so any young woman who became a SS smoker and has had a baby with health issues is very likely a victim of severe negligence at best. Such a study would help raise awareness and, if there is evidence that this harm has in fact been done, it might help bring compensation and justice to the child victims of Swisher Sweets and their DDT/Carbendazim cocktail.
So then there’s research like this – not the only study of its kind either.
Neurotoxicology
2011 Mar;32(2):268-76.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuro.2010.12.008. Epub 2010 Dec 21.
Correlating neurobehavioral performance with biomarkers of organophosphorous pesticide exposure
“There is compelling evidence that adverse neurobehavioral effects are associated with occupational organophosphorous pesticide (OP) exposure in humans. Behavioral studies of pesticide applicators, greenhouse workers, agricultural workers and farm residents exposed repeatedly over months or years to low levels of OPs reveal a relatively consistent pattern of neurobehavioral deficits.”
By the way I do realize that OP pesticides are not the issue in cigarettes today they were for smokers 1970-2010, who are just now beginning to suffer and die in great numbers from neurological diseases nobody is tracing to OP poisoning because they don’t live anywhere near a farm and were never exposed to OP. Except concealed in their cigarettes, known to the government and the manufacturers. hidden from doctors.
So I’m thinking – could switching to organic cigarettes make a difference, even a small one, not just in suicidal thinking and behavior but also in the underlying toxic conditions that are driving the mental and emotional suffering?
The problem is that if there’s a connection it’s being missed because nobody has ever seen a single government, medical or scientific report showing what concentrations of which pesticides are in which brands.
That’s a shame because just on an individual level it’s possible that simply switching to an organic cigarette, branded or RYO a person dealing with drugs and/or alcohol could lower their stress levels and maybe feel better just by eliminating these hidden insecticides and fungicides, without having to go through the difficult process of quitting smoking on top of drinking, addiction, rehab and sobriety.
I know in my heart that anyone who smokes who is also fighting addiction to any drug will find that their suffering is eased and their fight may become a little easier if they will just switch to organic tobacco cigarettes. No need to quit smoking- just switch and then see what happens.
Maybe nothing, or maybe you’ll feel better with just the pesticides out of your system. Maybe not having those pesticide neurochemicals interacting with your other drugs and all attacking your nervous system and hormones all at once will ease some of your pain and anxiety.
Maybe you’ll think less about hurting yourself. Maybe you’ll feel better, regardless of anything else you’re doing or not doing about drugs or drinking. Who knows? Is it worth a try? Wouldn’t that just drive some people you know crazy – seeing that you can smoke and maybe even enjoy it without hurting yourself, and maybe even make yourself feel better in the process? Then of course at the right moment you might decide to try a new idea I’m putting out there –
Organic Cold Turkey – A Crazy New Way To Quit! Really.
Organic Cold Turkey takes quitting to a new level of easy.
First, get rid of what’s really addicting you – cigarettes, not Tobacco.
Switch to Organic tobacco.
It’s easy to do – lots of smokers have done it
Goodbye addictive thought & behavior-controlling neurochemicals.
Those “Gotta have a smoke” thoughts were never your own.
Those incredible urges weren’t Nicotine.
Now that you’re smoking real Tobacco you’ll soon discover that …
Sure, it’s addicting, just like coffee or sex or cherry pie –
You don’t have to have it, but you like it.
You’ll find yourself cutting down naturally, without even trying
Then you can just try not smoking at all for a day.
You’ll want to smoke, but you won’t have to.
So then OK, maybe have a smoke after dinner – that’s all.
Go with that for a while.
Next week maybe try nothing – all day and after dinner too.
You’re going Organic Cold Turkey.
You’re finding out that you’re in control.
You’re finding out that you can smoke or not,
When you want and if you want.
You’re free from cigarettes, and the hook, and the Tobacco Cartel
Hello! This blog post is now part of my ebook “Smoke No Evil” available on Amazon
Hi! Thanks for visiting. I hope you’ll be interested in knowing more about how the illusion that tobacco is a dangerous addictive killer weed has been masking the reality of what is actually addicting and killing smokers for decades. The book is available on Amazon or you can click here to request your free review copy of “Smoke No Evil”. After you read it, I hope that you’ll add your voice to those demanding investigation and accountability for the Tobacco Cartel. My hope is also that the knowledge in this book can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, and life-affirming for those who already understand and smoke or vape only organic tobacco whenever possible.
Whether you smoke, vape, or chew tobacco this book destroys the myth that tobacco is somehow a killer weed. (Heard that particular lie elsewhere?). Using data and hard evidence, this book proves that it’s not tobacco killing millions of smokers every year, and it never has been. You’ll see how the “science” used to prove that Tobacco is a killer is pure fraud and deception on the part of the Tobacco Cartel, and pure hypocrisy on the part of regulators and anti-tobacco propagandists.
Just click hereand I’ll email you a PDF review copy of “Smoke No Evil” that you can read on any device.
My hope is that the knowledge here can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products.
Hello! This blog post is now part of my newly published ebook “Smoke No Evil“, which is published on Amazon but its available free for the asking to visitors like you – see below.
I here’s nothing wrong with smoking Tobacco. It’s as safe as wine, beer, or cheeseburgers. It’s the Tobacco Cartel’s products that sicken and kill. “Smoking-related Death” has nothing to do with Tobacco. Many people understand the truth, but don’t know the whole story.
Just click here to request your free review copy of “Smoke No Evil”. After you read it, I hope that you’ll add your voice to those demanding investigation and accountability for the Tobacco Cartel. My hope is also that the knowledge in this book can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, and life-affirming for those who already understand and smoke or vape only organic tobacco whenever possible.
Whether you smoke, vape, or chew tobacco this book destroys the myth that tobacco is going to harm you. Using data and hard evidence, this book proves that it’s not tobacco killing millions of smokers every year, and it never has been. You’ll see how the “science” used to prove that Tobacco is a killer is pure fraud and deception on the part of the Tobacco Cartel, and pure hypocrisy on the part of regulators and anti-tobacco propagandists.
My hope is that the knowledge here can be life-changing for smokers who are trapped in addiction to commercial Tobacco Cartel products, particularly people who are members of oppressed minority communities where the damage from pesticides in cheap tobacco products is magnified by genetic vulnerability.
Toxicologists have just designated a new class of chemicals, aptly naming them Obesogens. With chronic exposure, or with exposure before birth at a critical development point, these chemicals initiate body processes that lead directly to childhood, teen and adult obesity and the range of related diseases.
Tobacco products are full of Obesogens, far more of them in far greater concentrations than in any other environmental or consumer product source. Yes Obesogenic chemicals are everywhere, and yes they are in every diet, but their presence as heavy contaminants of tobacco products is a unique kind of hidden health threat whose proportions are unseen.
The data above displays some of the pesticides we just identified in our tests of tobacco brands popular with kids. Our tests were the first ever of off-the-shelf tobacco brands for pesticide Obesogens. We’re especially concerned about the concentrations of some of the azole fungicides we found, in addition to the DDT.
Kids who smoke these tobacco products are being exposed to a pesticide cocktail with each inhalation, 50-100 times a day. This is a level that is unmatched by any other type of exposure to Obesogens or to any class of pesticides. None of the studies of obesogenic chemicals look at what happens to young people who are dosing themselves with a cocktail of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals every waking hour, but it’s pretty easy to see what researchers will find when they do the science.
Here’s some of what is already known.
“Obesogens disrupt the molecular mechanisms controlling the development and maintenance of adipose tissue. This disruption has the potential to produce larger and more numerous fat cells, which could in turn lead to obesity and related complications. Obesogens can also alter programing of metabolic set points, appetite, and satiety.” https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP2545
Consider the extreme concentration of DDT we found in the Swisher Sweets (in the data above). This brand is #1 in popularity among child and teen little cigar smokers in marginalized communities. Keeping the Swisher Sweet DDT concentration of 0.816 mg/kg in mind, check this out:
Obesogenic chemicals trigger complex responses by human endocrine and immune systems. Pesticides that persist in body tissues like DDT and Carbendazim are particularly powerful Obesogens that operate 24/7, so even when a child is sleeping these Obesogens are at work deep in their tissues.
Pesticide researchers are hard-pressed to study the effects of a single pesticide thoroughly, and when it comes to the multiplying effects of combined pesticides they pretty much throw up their hands – although they do it sounding very scientific and technical. But whatever brand a child or teen is smoking, when you look at the dozens of Obesogenic pesticides that are being inhaled puff after puff as a toxic cocktail we can be sure that the potential for inflammatory obesity is multiplied.
The cheaper the tobacco product the more Obesogens it has. Notice the progression from American Spirit Blue cigarettes to Swisher Sweet little cigars in the data table above. In a new variation on an old story, the very communities where the cheapest tobacco products are marketed are communities of children and adults who are most genetically vulnerable to inhaled pesticides and their Obesogenic effects. Hispanic, African-American and Native American children and teens seem to be particularly susceptible to Obesogenic chemicals. These communities also have the highest rates of both smoking and obesity. I think we have the connection in Obesogenic pesticides.
Unfortunately all the research on inhaled pesticide exposure so far is either on exposure through diet or through environmental causes – accidental releases, agricultural drift, etc. Nobody has ever studied the health impact of inhaling a pesticide cocktail 50-100 times a day, but when it comes to dosing yourself with Obesogens that sounds like a pretty dramatic way to do it.
Heindel J J, Newbold R, Schug T T.2015. Endocrine disruptors and obesity. Nat Rev Endocrinol 11(11):653–661, PMID: 26391979, https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo. 2015.163
My concern is that those fruity, sweet, cheap and heavily marketed “Little Cigars” that are especially appealing to Hispanic and African-American children and teens who smoke are the most heavily contaminated with obesogenic pesticides of any tobacco product category we’ve tested so far. Obesogenic pesticides in these cheap tobacco products being marketed to dietarily and genetically vulnerable youth may account for some of the increased incidence of obesity among children and young people in these communities.
Of course, it isn’t just pesticides in cheap tobacco products making poor marginalized people obese – there are obesogenic chemicals in everything that people incarcerated in marginalized communities have available to eat and drink, and in virtually everything in their toxic environment. It’s just that tobacco products are the most concentrated source of the worst possible kinds of pesticides all blended together into a toxic cocktail that you inhale rather than drink, and that as one of its main side-effects makes smokers obese.
Eskenazi B, Chevrier J, Rosas L G, Anderson H A, Bornman M S, Bouwman H, et al. 2009. The Pine River statement: human health consequences of DDT use. Environ Health Perspect 117(9):1359–1367, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737010/
The big difference between tobacco products as an Obesogenic chemical source and all other sources is that illegal obesogenic pesticides in cheap tobacco products are 100% preventable as a contributing factor to childhood obesity.
Kids are being subjected to these hidden, unregulated obesogenic chemicals for just one reason – they mean higher profits for the tobacco manufacturer. Tobacco companies take the cheapest possible tobacco trash swept up off the dirt floors of their factories in Third-World countries and ship it to the US by the freighter-load to make into those sweet, fruity little treats that teens love to smoke. (What happens to the actual tobacco leaf is another long story.)
More importantly, the obesogens in tobacco products are inhaled, not eaten. This is absolutely critical. All the research on the toxicity of pesticides shows much higher toxicity for the most hazardous chemicals when inhalation is the route of exposure, even though there is no research on what happens when pesticides are inhaled regularly every day, every waking hour.
Roots Of The Atrocity
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 every kind of sugar and high-quality protein that every bug, animal and worm in nature is irresistibly drawn to munch on those extremely tasty, extremely valuable tobacco leaves. So, for centuries growing tobacco meant prodigious hand labor in the tobacco fields day and night by black and brown people, with great wealth accruing of course to White people who used that wealth as the basis for early American economic development, and for hundreds of years Tobacco steadily built the foundation of American wealth along with cotton, sugar and alcohol of course.
But all that tobacco wealth, with all the power that it conveyed, wasn’t a real industry until agricultural chemicals came along, and then when they did tobacco was one of the earliest and strongest adopters of pesticides. That was because they saw immediately that $100 worth of chemicals could increase profits $500 an acre because of the extra tobacco not eaten by bugs, and $10,000+ for the manufactured products from that extra tobacco. So really, from the tobacco companies’ point of view, using those chemicals was and still is largely a business decision. If smokers die early well, that’s why they advertise so heavily to kids. The industry actually uses the term “Replacement Smokers”.
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.
Those little cigars that are being marketed so successfully to young Latino and Black kids are loaded with the residues of the chemicals used to control bugs on the tobacco because they are made with the waste from higher quality tobacco products made for sale in wealthier communities. Tobacco leaf, which is relatively less contaminated then the trashy parts of the plant, goes into the expensive cigarettes. Again, check the data at the top of the post and ask yourself – which gets sold at the suburban mini-mart and which gets sold at the bodega?
White smokers get to choose the cleaner, higher quality tobacco leaf if they’re informed enough to do so while Black and Latino smokers get little cigars made with the trash swept up off the tobacco factory floor and don’t have any choice except other equally contaminated cheap shit.
Here’s why the trashy parts are the most contaminated parts of the plant. The tobacco industry pays huge bucks to its scientists to design chemicals that will kill the bugs on the tobacco leaves and then trans-locate into the stems, stalks and roots of the plant so that they don’t affect the flavor of that precious tobacco leaf that’s going into the premium smokes. The contaminated trash parts of the tobacco plant – after the leaf is removed – is what goes into making all those cheap, fruity smokes that poor Black & Latino kids are being trained to love.
So that’s it. Poor young Black and Latino people who fall for the tobacco companies’ propaganda are being sickened, poisoned and made morbidly obese all simply because the tobacco companies can make more money using chemicals that happen to be Obesogenic, and carcinogenic, and teratogenic, and just plain xenobiotic on their crops that they don’t have to account for when they are selling their trash to kids in poor communities around the world.
It doesn’t really matter to the tobacco companies if their smokers get sick and obese and diabetic and have cancer and die young as long as they (1) keep smoking and (2) create at least a couple of replacement smokers before they die. It’s all just a numbers game to them.
But as for us? All it will take to answer this arrogance with finality is for one communities to act to investigate their local tobacco product supply. Then if they find it contaminated, and especially if some of that contamination is from banned substance like DDT, they can then pass local ordinances that impose reasonable pesticide residue standards on tobacco products being sold in their community.
If a child struggling with obesity has a smoking mother, both mother and child should be tested for Obesogenic pesticide poisoning which if found could lead to treatment. Anyone struggling with obesity who smokes, especially little cigars, should get their blood tested for Obesogenic pesticides. As long as the body is carrying a burden of Obesogenic chemicals, especially if they’re being constantly replenished by smoking or breathing second-hand smoke, no amount of dieting, pharmaceuticals or surgery will help.
I believe that those states where Cannabis is legal and where pesticide residue standards have already been put in place with lots of careful consideration will be the first where communities will insist on these reasonable standards. Our federal and state agencies and legislators have largely been compromised by tobacco industry stealth tactics over the past 50 years of carefully tended regulatory loopholes, exemptions and curious omissions. Local community officials have not been so compromised because the tobacco industry likes to work from the top down – they think of themselves as too wealthy and powerful to be accountable.
They just haven’t met the right Justice of The Peace or Magistrate yet who has a dear niece who can’t stop smoking Swisher Sweets and who is obese, diabetic, and has one child with leukemia and another with ADHD. Show the judge that list of Obesogenic and Xenobiotic pesticides in what his niece has been smoking and ask him if he’s OK with that.
Hi! Thanks for visiting. I hope you’ll be interested in knowing more about how the illusion that tobacco is a dangerous addictive killer weed has been masking the reality of what is actually addicting and killing smokers for decades. The book is available on Amazon or you can click here to request 
