sisyphus wrote: ↑Mon May 27, 2019 11:43 am
I'm a firm believer in smoking everywhere. The universal demonization of tobacco occurred solely on the basis that it costs the insurance industry a ton of money and is a glaring example of how we've allowed the ruling class to condition us to support their agenda even when it goes against our own best interests. Mexico is a fantastic country, they'll bring an ashtray to your table at the restaurant.
No truer words. I grew up in North Carolina "Golden Leaf" country and worked tobacco all my life until I joined the Army. "Real" tobacco is pretty much harmless when used in moderation. It's the chemicals and additives and carcinogens that's put on it that kills people. My father died from a lymphoma attributed to malathion. I remember watching him as a kid pour the 5 gallon can into the water barrel and stir it up by rolling up his sleeve and swishing it all around with his bare arm. I never saw the logic behind smoking something soaked in Agent Orange and thinking it is "safe". From my understanding of research at UNC on the subject years ago, carcinogens sprayed on tobacco is never "gone", it's absorbed into the cells of the leaf and remains. The only exception I believe if is you spray it and it rains right afterwards and washes it away before it can be absorbed into the leaf. That's why we never sprayed when the forecast was calling for rain. The tobacco we smoke today isn't the same tobacco my grandpa raised on his farm.
The "war on tobacco" is nothing more than insurance lobbying in Congress so they can cut their expenses and have a higher profit margin. That need to cut payouts was created by pesticides and herbicides. I remember helping my grandfather "top and sucker" tobacco, and remember walking down the rows all day hoeing the weeds by hand. Todays farmers don't want that manual labor and it's easier to dump hundreds of gallons of carcinogens on it to control the suckers and pests and weeds instead of suckering and topping and hoeing by hand.
I had two great-uncles who each smoked a pack of non-filtered Camels every day of their life. If tobacco really was as dangerous as the insurance companies want you to believe, they both wouldn't have lived into their 90's. Of course, back then they were smoking cigarettes that weren't laced with pesticides and chemicals and additives designed to get you addicted.
