Many believe that the globally-expanding War on Natural Plants (tobacco div.) is just about two "sides": health interests vs. cigarette makers (or "evil" tobacco). Many may have to think again. We ought not forget "Refer Madness".
SOME POINTS ABOUT WHAT MAY BE THE BIGGEST CORPORATE
LIABILITY DODGE IN HISTORY...THE GREAT SMOKING SCAM.
* ANTI-CORPORATE CAMPAIGN? Suspicion about the validity of the "anti-tobacco" campaign arises when one notes who is conducting the apparently wholesome crusade; the corporate media, corporate-funded public officials, corporate-backed "grassroots" groups, cigarette manufacturing investors and corporate "science" and health care. These entities are hardly "consumer activists", although they may play such roles on TV.
* LANGUAGE FLAWS: Typical cigarettes are no more "tobacco" than the Sunday New York Times is a Pine Tree. According to US Patents (many from Philip Morris), cigs may be made from fake tobacco mashed (like paper) out of things like municipal paper waste, agricultural waste, food processing waste, paper manufacturing waste and so forth. Even when based on tobacco, this may be another paper-making type process involving tobacco trash... stems, twigs, roots, leaf trash, dust and sweepings. It's colored, flavored, given measured shot of nicotine and cut to look as if it were tobacco shreds. It's not. Although "tobacco" or "tobacco companies" are now colloquial and common usage terms, they are incorrect and often lies perpetrated by the industry itself. Such terms are useless, even counter-productive, in legitimate science, medicine...or law.
* DUPONT CIGARETTES? Despite the health crisis, according to Pesticide Action Network (www.panna.org ), there are STILL 450 pesticides legal on tobacco in the U.S.! About a third are chlorine chemicals. The rest are organophosphates and carbamates, no slouches in health-damage department themselves. Manufacturers of these things enjoy apparent utter exemption from even casual glances, let alone indictments, from anti-"smoking" warriors. Not all pesticides in any one cigarette, thankfully.
( See also http://rampages.onramp.net/~bdrake for info and many links. )
* DIOXIN DOWELS: Information available at even the U.S. EPA and Health & Human Services points to high levels of dioxin in typical cigarettes. It's not from tobacco or any plant. It's from incineration of many chlorine adulterants like the chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, chlorinated pesticide residues, any number of the many non-tobacco additives and even the chlorine elements in the industrial waste cellulose used to make fake tobacco. "Fine Tobacco Taste", indeed.
* PUFF THE AGENT ORANGE DRAGON: Dioxin, acknowledged even by EPA to be from chlorine industry, not nature, has recently been classified as KNOWN carcinogen...the highest, worst level. The international POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) summit coming up in Sweden proposes global ban of the "Dirty Dozen" POPs. Among them is Dioxin. Despite these promising events, dioxin is STILL legal in cigarettes. The exposure route of inhaling incinerated dioxins is overwhelmingly the worst possible route. According to Greenpeace, about a thousand times worse than eating or skin exposures because of how it gets to the lungs, the best organs for getting it into one's body. "Legal" nonetheless. Even "anti-smoking" officials don't mind this. They are invariably well-connected economically to various chlorine interests and prefer to only blame the tobacco and the victims. Mother Nature can't complain...and victims are left uninformed, misinformed and powerless...or dead.
* THE SHELL (ET ILK) GAME: At the up-coming POPs summit, mentioned above, including dioxin, EIGHT of the Dirty Dozen industrial pollutants to be banned (we hope) are on lists of Cigarette pesticides! These are: Dioxins, Heptachlor, Dieldrin, Chlordane, Toxaphane, Aldrin, Endrin...and DDT (!). Some of those are products of Human-Rights Violator and all-around environmental destroyer, Shell Oil. Listen in vain for officials who express concern about "smoking and health" to mention this. DDT, banned for use in the U.S., comes to smokers courtesy of Customs and Agricultural officials who allow DDT-contaminated import tobacco to slip past their sharp eyes. Apparently, no DDT-sniffing dogs have yet been trained.
* RADIATION RODS: The not-exactly-top-secret Readers' Digest (3/86) and an item in Jack Herer's "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", reported on studies that indicate that MOST so-called "smoking related" cancer can be credited to not tobacco but to RADIATION...from uranium-contaminated phosphate tobacco fertilizers...which is still legal for use on tobacco. Most of this radioactive fertilizer is mined in Florida by the notorious Occidental corporation. Has anyone seen them in court hearings on "smoking and health"? This radiation, although low-level, damages cells and leads to cancer. The simultaneous presence of dioxin in the vile mix, creates The Promoter Effect (see bio-chem 101) which SPEEDS UP the cell damage. Cancer virtually inevitable, if something else doesn't get you first. Studies about rads in cigs are available at HHS but have, oddly, not been given a look by health-concerned officials.
* WHO NEEDS SCIENCE? Note that, to all appearances, there are NO studies available on possible or proven negative health effects of tobacco...plain, uncontaminated tobacco, that is. Why not? One guesses easily that such tests would show that whatever inherent risks plain tobacco may present (no one suggests it, or anything, is absolutely harmless), the risks of using typical cigarettes are enormously, criminally greater...thus pointing directly to major liabilities for cigarette makers, their ingredients/adulterants suppliers and all of their insurers and investors...not to mention effects on the corrupted U.S. "regulatory" system that facilitated it all.
* MEDICINAL TOBACCO: There ARE studies (from HHS etc) about medicinal benefits of nicotine for symptomatic relief of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other mental pathologies. Does Big Pharmaceutical want to maximize profits from their synthetic alternatives what with aging Baby Boomers being a huge potential market? Does the sun set in the West? (Tobacco/nicotine is also beneficial for appetite suppression, alertness, digestion and stress relief
Original: Pesticide Pegs vs. Tobacco