GLOBAL BAN ON INDUSTRIAL POLLUTANTS:

AN END OF “WAR ON HEMP”?
REMOVAL OF INDUSTRIAL POISONS FROM CIGARETTES?

The POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) treaty, aimed at global ban of the "Dirty Dozen" worst industrial pollutants, was formally adopted in Stockholm on May 23, 2001. The twelve are: furans, PCBs, Mirex, Heptachlor, dioxins, hexachlorobenzene, DDT, Dieldrin, Chlordane, Toxaphane, Aldrin and Endrin.

The last eight of these toxins and carcinogens just happen to be, and/or have been, "legal" contaminants of U.S.cigarettes. The last six have been banned for U.S. use. Dieldrin, Aldrin and Endrin, came from kitchens of environmentally-destructive, human-rights-violating Shell corporation. The 450 pesticides that are still, incredibly, permitted by U.S. regulators on tobacco are almost all from Big Oil and Big Pharmaceutical. “Marlboro Country” is dotted with oil-rigs and chemical plants.

DDT, banned for use in the U.S. since the 70's, ends up in typical U.S. cigarettes via some residues in soils and from unconscionably lax Customs & USDA scrutiny of import tobacco from lands without bans or effective laws. About two-thirds of import tobacco isn't inspected for DDT or any number of other toxic and carcinogenic industrial substances. The Circle of Poison rolls on.

Dioxin, unwanted by-product of Dow-developed chlorine, is not so unwanted that the government bans it. Chlorine is unnecessary for virtually all of its uses but it’s still approved because it’s more profitable for chlorine industries than benign alternatives. The industries are not indicted for (nor penalized for nor required to pay for) the health threats, diseases and deaths caused by inevitable dioxin. It now damages cells and endocrine systems of every human, and probably most animal species, on earth. Dioxin, a known carcinogen (the worst classification) is also adept at causing accelerated cell damage caused by other carcinogens (the “Promoter Effect”), immune system damage, learning disorders, pregnancy disruptions, nervous system damage and fetal damage. No problem to US regulators (even those who champion fetus protection). Chlorine is STILLL permitted in typical cigarettes despite the fact that incinerated dioxins represent the absolute worst form of exposure because of ease getting into the lungs, the most efficient organs for the intake.

Chlorine is not from tobacco, the alleged lone-gunman of the "smoking” brouhaha. It comes to smokers of typical (non-organic) cigarettes from the chlorine-bleached paper, about a third of the pesticides, a number of the possibly 1000 untested, often toxic/carcinogenic additives and even the industrial waste cellulose used to make fake tobacco. Unless a cigarette brand is guaranteed to be only tobacco, one may be unwittingly smoking a vile paper-like concoction (nicely flavored, sweetened, colored and scented) made from any mix of contaminated tobacco waste, agricultural waste, paper products waste, food processing waste, timber products waste and municipal paper waste. If someone's cig smoke smells familiar, it may be. It could be the Health & Fitness section from your last month's recycled New York Times, a chlorine-bleached newspaper, incidentally.

The implications of a ban on dioxin, and therefore a ban or severe restrictions on chlorine production and incineration, are astronomical. It is hard to imagine that the U.S. will allow this to happen, even though the U.S. signed the treaty. It would require a night-to-day readjustment; a sweep-out of most current government officials at almost all levels, with an accompanying ban on conflicts-of-interest between government and the chlorine industries...including Big Oil, Big Pharmaceutical, Big Plastic, Big Waste Disposal, Big Paper, Big Ag Biz, Big Pesticides, Big Insurance and Big Wall St…all protected from the public by Big Military and Big Police. Penalties alone could pay for a Public Health System for the next millennium. If the U.S. ratifies this one, it’s a sign that democracy may enter the country.

The "war on drugs"...hemp division…is enormously about chlorine. Hemp, non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, was illegitimately banned, for one top reason, because it would compete too well with chlorine-wallowing industries like logging/pulp/paper, petrochemical plastics, synthetic fibers, petroleum lubricants, Big Oil in general, pesticides (hemp doesn't need pesticides) and Big Cotton (which uses almost as many chemicals as industrial tobacco).

One crime aspect does not relate directly to hemp or tobacco but exposes the nature of the chlorine business. CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) did vast damage to earth's vital ozone layer and to all sorts of land and sea species...not to mention the epidemics of skin cancer in humans.

The treaty to ban dioxins should and must be a springboard to hemp re-legalization so that it can be restored as a (renewable) resource for paper, packaging, plastics (hemp can be processed into non-toxic, compostable plastics!), building materials, livestock feed, human food, bio-mass energy, fibers and many things. Some other plants are somewhat useful in some of these areas but none have hemp's exceptionally strong, durable, long fibers (paper can be recycled 4 times more than tree paper), none have the growing range of hemp, and none are adaptable for such a variety of uses. Hemp requires little water (unlike aquifer-depleting cotton), presents a way to save vanishing farmlands and forests and offers employment areas that involve no toxic/cancer-causing industrial poisoning of workers or our environment. The prohibition of hemp, considering what replaced it, is a business/gov’t-perpetrated atrocity...even before one considers the abominable 'drug war' and prison system.

The “sin” aspect sanctifies and camouflages The Big Lie about chlorine/dioxin links to both cannabis and tobacco. One thing (among many) being smoked in typical “Pesticide Pegs” is dioxin, known carcinogen and star of the “dirty dozen”. It’s the top POP. The holy crusade against tobacco is a ruse by and for the chemical AND cigarette industry, their insurers and investors, and gov't regulators to dodge unprecedented criminal conspiracy and liability charges. Nuclear weapons haven't killed as many people. Goal for the Corporatocracy is to blame nature’s unpatented tobacco plant even for diseases that could not be caused by ANY natural plant, incinerated or otherwise. Goal is also to blame uninformed, unprotected and insufficiently-warned consumers, the victims, for failing to obey inadequate, misleading "warnings". Victims are STILL told that it's just tobacco! Corporate "science" and corporate-funded government maintains the deception. That's as stupendous a lie as the corporate/government slanders against marijuana and hemp…or the lie that this administration will work for global ban on POPs.