Why Do We Call It “Tobacco”?
September 14, 2005
By J. Jonik
Before the next round in the “smoking ban” brouhaha, let’s find out what we are talking about.?? Words are used here, even to create law, that have no basis in science or medicine, or that are so unqualified that they are vague and virtually meaningless.? The cigarette industry benefits enormously by “anti smoking” and “anti tobacco” language.
A typical cigarette is no more tobacco than a newspaper is a Pine Tree, though the newsprint may come from tree pulp. Most cigarettes are made from “reconstituted tobacco”, a paper-like material concocted from tobacco waste—roots, stems, twigs, leaf veins, dust and sweepings. This “tobacco” may be made from (colored, flavored, scented, texturized and nicotine-doctored) recycled paper, timber products waste, paper manufacturing waste, food processing waste, agricultural waste, coffee bean hulls, peanut shells, and “puffed” oats, barley, millet, wheat, rice, milo and, for movie audiences, popped corn.?? To call this “tobacco” is either an error or a lie.?????????????
U.S. patents for processes to make “tobacco substitute material” note that the camouflaged trash may constitute “all or part of” cigarette stuffing. Our “tough-on-smoking” officials have made no laws to require tobacco in a cigarette, nor any safety testing of the non-tobacco stuff, nor any labeling of what is in a product.? The word “tobacco” doesn’t even appear on many cigarette packs! We assume it is tobacco because manufacturers are called “big tobacco”, and complicit officials accept that.? There can be no valid complaints or laws about tobacco, or about harms of “environmental tobacco smoke” (“ETS”), where no tobacco exists.??
Cigarettes once were just dried, shredded tobacco leaves rolled up in unbleached paper. Then, in the early decades of the 1900s, Dow gassed chlorine out of regular table salt. Chlorine became a profitable staple of the paper industry for bleaching, and of the pesticide, petroleum, pharmaceutical and other industries.?? Chlorine was only profitable because industries evaded liability and criminal consequences for negative effects on wildlife, human life and earth’s protective ozone layer.
There are high levels of chlorine’s cancer-causing, immune-suppressing, etc., by-product, dioxin, in smoke from typical cigarettes. Though dioxin is among the most deadly industrial pollutants, even “concerned” anti-smoking officials refuse to ban chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, and the use of chlorine pesticides.? Pesticide Action Network noted some 400 pesticides registered for tobacco use.not all, of course, in one cigarette.? DDT was applied to U.S. tobacco for decades, until it was banned.? But DDT still contaminates products from residues in soils, and from un-checked import tobacco used for domestic cigarettes.? Consumer Right-To-Know principles are violated here as in no other product. Consumers are not warned.? Chlorine and cigarette interests, including tobacco pesticide makers, and all of their insurers, investors, and government allies, would object.?? No bans for them.
Other residues come from organophosphate and carbamate pesticides, no slouches in causing harms themselves.? Radioactive phosphate tobacco fertilizers, though exposed years ago for causing most (!) upper-respiratory “smoking-related” cancers, are still legal.??? Further, there are many non-tobacco crops used as cigarette additives. Few, if any, are organic, thus increasing the pesticide and dioxin presence.? Almost any of these can damage health, but the combination effects are inevitably horrific, probably beyond the expertise (or willingness) of current science to calculate.? None of the hundreds of thousands of dead victims are autopsied to determine pesticide, radiation or dioxin levels.?? No cigarettes used by victims are checked to see if they contain tobacco.? For the sake of the industrial perpetrators, the policy is to blame a) the public-domain, virtually-unstudied, natural, unpatented tobacco plant, and b) uninformed, unprotected, insufficiently-warned victims, the demonized “smokers”.?
Cigarette firms, in a gesture of “openness”, released a list of 599 additives, most sounding like wholesome stuff from your grandmother’s kitchen.? Probably over 400 other additives remain “proprietary secrets”. Even a U.S. Surgeon General could be fined and jailed for revealing them.? The list includes all sorts of sweet, flavorful things such as cherry, plum, apricot, apple, sugar, corn sugar, nutmeg, chocolate, cocoa, molasses, orange, lemon, kola nut, honey, spearmint, peppermint, almond, raisin, coconut, lime, vanilla, liquorice, grape, caramel and, for that post-breakfast touch, maple syrup and butter.?? Artificial sweetener, Sorbitol, is an ingredient.? The Wall Street Journal once noted that Marlboros contain 12.3% sugar. No wonder kids go for ’em.? There’s also coffee and tea, which, along with the chocolate and ammonia, help with addiction enhancement. Anti-smoking activists claiming concern for the kids don’t say a word.? Better, for business interests, to bust the kids who go for this bait.
To add injury to injury, menthol in many brands numbs one’s natural defenses against irritation.? One can smoke, but just not feel, and avoid, the harms.?? .
Those who manage to survive this Guinea-pigging combination are further hit with added burn accelerants including citrates (from “anti-smoking” citrus-growing states), phosphates, and saltpeter.plus paper that is intentionally made porous, and stuffing that is intentionally fluffed up, to make sure the cigarette stays burning when untended.?? This increases smoking, profits and regressive tax revenues, and facilitates the plague of? “smoking-related” fires, injuries and deaths.?? The victims are blamed, for “careless smoking”, though none were told that the products were unconscionably crafted to burn like fuses.??
Government officials, of course, hope to cut public health costs, but not by retrieving profits or demanding compensation and penalties from cigarette makers, their suppliers, or any of their insurers or investors.? The victims, including bar and restaurant owners, are to pay, and bear the avalanche of? “smoking” laws.
So-called “tobacco settlements” do not bother cigarette makers.? That expense is simply passed onto smokers through price hikes.? This is, essentially, a regressive tax paid, to the states, by deceived, unprotected, insufficiently-warned, poisoned, sick, and dying victims.? The money can “legally” go right back to parts of the cigarette industry such as advertisers, pesticides/pharmaceutical firms, agricultural interests that supply cigarette additives, and insurers that own multi-million dollar cigarette holdings.?? Mob bosses must observe with awe, or disgust.
This issue is not about “smoking” or tobacco, no matter how much we dislike smoke, tobacco, smelly hair, or those darn smokers. It’s about extensive corporate crimes, including fraud, graft, risking public health catastrophes, mass murder, chemical assault, and mass experimentation on subjects without informed consent. It’s about public government complicity with private businesses, an issue that affects us all, across the board.
(c) Copyright 2005 The Smoker’s Club, Inc. Please repost with link back to this original article.
