To paraphrase Jesse Ventura...When government says it's going to protect you, watch out, you're gonna lose your liberties!

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By the FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT, the FDA has the job of "regulating" "tobacco." Quotes are needed, as neither term adequately tells the story. That is, the FDA isn't regulating the cigarette industry -- it's protecting it. Except for plain natural tobacco, the cigarettes it "regulates" are usually no more tobacco than drainage from Fukishima is just "water."

According to the U.S. GAO, tobacco is the sixth most pesticide-intensive crop, but you wouldn't know that from this Act. The word "pesticide" shows up just four times -- three times if you count one double reference as one. Those citations are copied below. Nothing is said about banning or warning about the residues of those pesticides or how they interact with the few cigarette ingredients (some flavorings) that the FDA will address. Added aromas, preservatives, humectants, adhesives, burn accelerants, addiction-enhancement substances, etc., are not discussed. The FDA will also ignore menthol, which numbs one to irritants so that one can painlessly smoke industrial irritants.

The word "chlorine," relating to any number of tobacco pesticides and to chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, is not mentioned even once, even though chlorine is the source of dioxins in smoke from typical contaminated products. This is remarkable since symptoms of dioxin exposure are identical to many, perhaps most, ailments said to be "smoking-related" (i.e., related to victim's behavior). The well-known (except to the FDA) immune-suppressing effect of dioxins, of course, applies to every "smoking-related" illness.

Needless to say, the word "dioxin" isn't here either, despite the fact that inhalation of dioxin, like through smoke of chlorine-contaminated cigarettes, is the worst possible exposure route because of the high efficiency of the lungs to bring dioxins into the blood stream and to fatty tissues where it remains, accumulates, and kills.

"NB" comments and some highlighting accompany the excerpts below.

Clips from FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ031.111.pdf

""CHAPTER IX--TOBACCO PRODUCTS

""SEC. 900. DEFINITIONS.

""In this chapter:

""(1) ADDITIVE. -- The term "additive" means any substance that the intended use of which results or may reasonably be expected to result, directly or indirectly, in its becoming a component or otherwise affecting the characteristic of any tobacco product (including any substances intended for use as a flavoring or coloring or in producing, manufacturing, packing, processing, preparing, treating, packaging, transporting, or holding), except that such term does not include tobacco or a pesticide chemical residue in or on raw tobacco or a pesticide chemical.

[NB Sure, pesticides aren't added to a cigarette. They are merely added to the tobacco crop and to tobacco in drying sheds. Pesticides are simply added at a different phase of the process. The FDA makes up its own narrow meaning of the term "additive." And, as elsewhere, pesticide residues on non-tobacco crop materials (wood chips, corncobs, soy, triticale, rice, wheat, peanut shells, millet, rapeseed, coffee bean hulls, etc.) used as tobacco substitutes in cigarettes are not considered.]

""(B) ADDITIONAL SPECIAL RULE. -- Beginning two years after the date of enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a tobacco product manufacturer shall not use tobacco, including foreign grown tobacco, that contains a pesticide chemical residue that is at a level greater than is specified by any tolerance applicable under Federal law to domestically grown tobacco.

[NB- So, a cigarette may contain as much pesticide residue as has already been permitted and used, for decades, without warning to consumers, on the Sixth Most Pesticide Intensive Crop. One might ask, "What tolerance IS there for pesticide residues on tobacco?"] Nov

""(e) GOOD MANUFACTURING PRACTICE REQUIREMENTS.--

""(1) METHODS, FACILITIES, AND CONTROLS TO CONFORM.--

""(A) IN GENERAL.--In applying manufacturing restrictions to tobacco, the Secretary shall, in accordance with subparagraph (B), prescribe regulations (which may differ based on the type of tobacco product involved) requiring that the methods used in, and the facilities and controls used for, the manufacture, preproduction design validation (including a process to assess the performance of a tobacco product), packing, and storage of a tobacco product conform to current good manufacturing practice, or hazard analysis and critical control point methodology, as prescribed in such regulations to assure that the public health is protected and that the tobacco product is in compliance with this chapter. Such regulations may provide for the testing of raw tobacco for pesticide chemical residues regardless of whether a tolerance for such chemical residues has been established.

{NB- This is just about raw tobacco, before processing and additives. It "may" (not "must" or "will") provide for testing for pesticide contaminants. Other forms of agricultural cellulose besides tobacco (see above), mixed with or entirely replacing tobacco in a given cigarette, are not mentioned. FDA says it's "tobacco" whether it is or is not.]

SEC. 4. SCOPE AND EFFECT.

" (b) AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES.--The provisions of this division (or an amendment made by this division) which authorize the Secretary to take certain actions with regard to tobacco and tobacco products shall not be construed to affect any authority of the Secretary of Agriculture under existing law regarding the growing, cultivation, or curing of raw tobacco.

[NB- Growing, cultivating, and curing involve pesticides. The USDA has approved of tobacco pesticides, up to about 450 that are registered for this use, since early in the last century, or, in other words, since the beginning of cancer epidemics. The USDA also approved, and still approves, phosphate fertilizers that put carcinogenic levels of PO-210 radiation into the smoke from many cigarettes and into the furthest reaches of Guinea-pigged smokers' lungs. No warnings to consumers requested or required.

Worse than that is that doctors, who've sworn the Hippocratic Oath, also fail to warn about or test patients for that or to assist patients in pursuing liability suits against the perpetrators.

Perhaps doctors are too dependent on the perpetrators' health insurers that invest so many billions in the cigarette industry, and in chlorine interests that are such a big part of corporate "medicine," AND in the pharmaceutical firms that make so many tobacco pesticides. Nice health care industry we have.

Authors Bio:
Long time activist in areas relating to industrial toxics, media content and control, death penalty, Mumia Abu-Jamal, hemp prohibition, civil rights, insurance influence in public governing, religious influence in public governing, unsafe foods, environmental issues, regressive "fees" to replace legitimate taxation, and the scapegoating of "sinful" tobacco for the health harms of industrial toxins, carcinogens and so forth.