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REEFER MADNESS II
Cannabis and Tobacco Issues Are Both About Dioxins & Pesticides
by John Jonik
It was not even a matter of changing hats to see that the war on tobacco (another smokable, medicinal, unpatentable, public-domain plant) virtually re-plays Reefer Madness. First the demonization, then the really corrupted "science", then the taxes...and now, with the new FDA law to "regulate tobacco" we are on the verge of actual prohibition....with all that entails re/ crimes and societal disruption and costs etc. The FDA has power to reduce nicotine content to almost zero to make that an non-effective substance. They have to leave some or else there will be no "drug" for the FDA to regulate. It is like removing THC from marijuana, or alcohol from wine. Those who carried out the first Reefer Madness are here at it again. Almost the same industrial players...pesticides, chlorine, timber/pulp, pharmaceuticals, etc. This time private insurers are big players since they invest billions in tobacco AND in tobacco pesticides, pharmaceuticals that also make tobacco pesticides, chlorine interests galore, and so on. Insurers, however, do not want to face liabilities for those industries---so we have what we have...scapegoating of the tobacco plant and the uninformed, unprotected victims for diseases inevitably caused by pesticides and dioxins. It is quite vicious and cruel when you think about it. Cannabis Prohibition was (is) largely about removing hemp from competition with chlorine products---synthetics and pesticide-intensive crops (including timber) and all of that story...Tobacco Prohibition is largely about the complicit industries evading easily the biggest liability (if not criminal as well) charges in industrial history for the incredibly harmful, carcinogenic adulterants of typical cigarettes. Please note that virtually all so-called "smoking related" diseases are identical to effects of exposures to pesticides and dioxins (from industrial chlorine, not tobacco, of course). Many if not most of those diseases are impossible to be caused by smoke from any plant, even evil tobacco. Where are today's Rachel Carsons? But Tobacco Prohibition is also, like the hemp deal, about removing public domain plant competition to patented drugs for stress relief, alertness, digestive relief, appetite suppression, and symptomatic relief for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's etc. (Note big Baby Boomer market coming up for drugs for those things.) And it's about stealing this traditionally-used plant from the public domain by putting it into Controlled Substance category...so that only pharms can use it...as they are doing already. The new FDA bill actually takes into account that the law will escalate Prohibition-style crimes. It even says that "illicit trade" supports terrorists! It's said elsewhere that marijuana trade does that too. So do guns and diamonds. Pesticide activists and other environmentalists won't touch this...so far. As one Greenpeace dioxin expert told me that GP won't touch the issue of dioxin in smoke from typical (chlorine contaminated) cigarettes because they feared that members would not approve of the implication that there can be a "safer cigarette"...i.e., one without pesticides and chlorine and so forth. Well, it cannot help but be safer...but no matter. Greenpeace has since dropped its anti-dioxin campaign. If it couldn't apply scientific integrity to the topic, it wasn't going to deal with it at all. The slogan "Silence = Death" did not occur to them. Other random points: * I understand that marijuana and tobacco are like natural yin and yang. One prompts appetite, the other suppresses it. One constricts blood flow, the other frees it up. I've read that tobacco smokers ought to have at least one joint a day to balance things out. * As with marijuana...not one person has been found to have died from tobacco...meaning JUST plain organic tobacco. The "science" that justifies all this has never analyzed or described what it studied. Never is there a qualifying term like "adulterated tobacco" or "plain unadulterated tobacco". Of course, they never say "dioxin-delivering, pesticide-drenched smoking products" either. But it gets worse. Any number of low-end cigarettes may contain absolutely NO tobacco at all but, instead, fake tobacco made in patented ways from all kinds of industrial waste cellulose to "simulate" tobacco...or to lie by appearance. Nicotine extract is added to these things, of course. So---if the study is about "smoking" or "cigarettes", we do not know, and are not told, what was studied. No matter...all the negative results are blamed on conveniently "sinful" tobacco. To get to one of my points----IF the chlorine, dioxin, pesticide aspects of the "smoking" situation were seriously addressed, and publicized, and acted upon---I believe that would go far to also expose the chlorine-dioxin-pesticide reasons for Hemp Prohibition.---with the idea to END hemp prohibition, of course. Similarly, the idea is to stop tobacco prohibition before it starts. Hemp prohibition may be a big cause, in a way, of all the millions of "smoking related" deaths and diseases because---had hemp agriculture been allowed to exist, it would have been such a Good Example (re/ worker and wildlife health, at least) that chlorine and pesticides would have been long discredited---perhaps to the point of being prohibited themselves. Farmers and amphibians etc dying in one place, but not the other---THAT would be bad news for Big Pesticides and chlorine. Without that cautionary situation...chlorine was left unscathed to contaminate typical cigarettes (and many things)...with the inevitable horrific consequences. Other exposures are bad, but there is No Worse Exposure Route for dioxins than via inhalation---due to the efficiency of the lungs. To have put, and allowed, that stuff in cigarettes may be the worst industrial, and governmental, crime in history.---which explains the billions now being spent, by the perpetrators, globally to "put this problem behind us." References |