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• > Stop the Dioxin Deniers at the FDA

Congress has approved legislation that will give the FDA power to "regulate tobacco", but a casual look at the details of the law raises troubling questions that relate to interests of toxics, environmental, corporate crime, media, scientific, medical, and other activists:

 1) FDA may require lower nicotine levels.  But that is a trick long-used by cigarette makers in "lite" brands to increase smoking rates (and "sin" tax revenues) as smokers smoke more, and more deeply, to get that "satisfaction".  Even officials "concerned" about smoking and health have allowed this all along.

 2) Nothing addresses chlorine pesticide residues or chlorine-bleached paper, sources of high levels of dioxin in the smoke. (Many, if not most, so-called "smoking-related" diseases are identical to symptoms of dioxin exposures...and many or most of those diseases are impossible to be caused by smoke from any plant.)

 3) Nothing in the legislation speaks of testing any of the 450 or so U.S.-registered tobacco pesticides or their virtually infinite combination effects.   The legislation does discuss pesticides....but only regarding applying U.S. standards to import tobacco. U.S. standards that allow dioxin-creating chlorine pesticides in cigarettes are worse than no standards at all because people think they are being protected from just such things.

 4) That any number of low-end brands may contain no tobacco at all is not mentioned. Cigarettes may be made from many kinds of industrial waste cellulose camouflaged, in patented ways, as if it was tobacco...with measured shots of nicotine extract added.  This is legal as long as package does not claim to contain tobacco.    (Look up "US Patent 3,978,866". Will the FDA also "regulate" peanut shells?   Can't get tobacco smoke from that.)

 5) Nothing is mentioned about PO-210 radiation in cigarettes from still-legal use of certain phosphate fertilizers, even though it was widely reported in the mid-80s as causing over 90 percent of upper respiratory "smoking related" cancers.   Not "Radiation Related"?

 6) Nothing is mentioned about testing any of the roughly 1400 non-tobacco substances (some supplied by pharmaceutical firms) used as additives.

 7) No mention is made of prohibiting added burn accelerants or other fire-starting features. (The spreading use of "fire-safe"...though not Fire Safe...cigarettes is a way to officially help the burn-accelerant interests evade charges and liabilities.)

 8) And nothing is there about testing plain, natural, unadulterated, traditionally-used, public-domain tobacco to see if it even merits "regulation" or prohibitionary laws.

   The FDA is more about regulating the behavior of individuals.    It is not about protecting people from the reckless, ruthless, even homicidal, behavior of cigarette makers, their ingredient suppliers, and their well-funded accomplices in public office.

    Those officials include those at all levels of federal, state, and local government who also pretend to be "anti tobacco" but do nothing about the above-noted threats to health.  And why should they?  After all, in most cases, they are the very officials who approved those widespread, even global-scale, health threats, and who continue to accept funding and personal investment income from the perpetrators.   They are therefore intent on scapegoating and criminalizing the victims and the "sinful" tobacco plant.
   That so many support this crusade in the belief that it's about progressive things like "clean air", "protecting workers", and human health, is a testimony to the power of corporate media to persuade.