There is a multi-state childhood tragedy underway in the USA, and no one seems to care. I am referring to the misguided and tragic legalization of recreational marijuana smoking on top of the already well-established tobacco smoking. And on 08 November 2022, metropolitan-area foresight-challenged voters in my home state of Missouri approved recreational marijuana for smoking. A while back, the electronic cigarette (“e-cigarette” or “vaping”) problem joined the marijuana issue and other long-term smoking problems for media attention. This illness now has a cause and an official name, thanks to the CDC: The cause is believed to be Vitamin E acetate, and the name is EVALI, an acronym for E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury. An “acceptable substitute” to tobacco?
We also have the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and its variants that are affecting not only us, but the entire world, and one part of this tragedy is the susceptibility of those with “underlying medical conditions” or “underlying health issues” to die because of it. These “underlying conditions” are normally some form of respiratory condition. And what is one of the main causes of these underlying respiratory conditions? Read on.
In recent years, some local and regional progress has been made concerning tobacco smoke. Individual states, cities, agencies, organizations and businesses have banned smoking in some workplaces and public areas, but the federal and state governments haven’t shown the courage necessary to really protect those most vulnerable to the dangers of second- and third-hand tobacco smoke — our children and youth.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term “third-hand smoke,” it refers to the smoke residue that clings to the skin, hair, clothing, furniture, walls, car interior and anything else within traveling distance of the smoke, causing these things to reek of smoke odors and, according to Hugo Destaillats of the National Academy of Sciences, “carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines.” These further pollute the air even when the smoking instrument itself has been extinguished.
Smokers who smoke inside their houses with younger family members present are causing untold damage to the developing lungs and respiratory systems of those youngsters. I can personally attest to this: During the first half of my life, I was forced to breathe second- and third-hand tobacco smoke, without my ever having personally smoked. Not only at home or in the car, I was also exposed to it at family and social events (wedding receptions and church-sponsored events were especially notable), at work when I was old enough to get a job, in the military, even at my dentist’s office! And later in life, when I finally had enough authority to place “No Smoking” signs in my shop areas at work, arrogant salesmen and disrespectful co-workers ignored them until I pointed them out and enforced them. That’s why, to this day, I have respiratory problems. My wife, who grew up under similar circumstances, had respiratory problems worse than mine, but she doesn’t have to worry about that anymore because of her untimely death earlier this year. The Cause of Death on the Death Certificate reads “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease with Acute Exacerbation.”
Similarly, if those of legal smoking age are driving the family somewhere in cold weather with the windows closed and the heater on, or in hot weather with the windows closed and the air conditioning on, and younger family members, friends or relatives are in the vehicle, these younger victims often have no say about the poison they are being forced to breathe. I see this all the time, and this constitutes child abuse and child endangerment. However, I have yet to see or hear about any law-enforcement official charging the smokers in these vehicles with what they deserve, and this allows the youngsters to become victims due to lung trouble. The youngsters then grow up to become a societal burden on their families or the medical community or, worse, become smokers themselves.
How many times have you simply been out in public, downwind from a smoker, only to choke on their inconsiderate-but-legal cloud of toxins?
And what about the destruction caused by irresponsibly and carelessly discarded cigarette butts tossed from car and truck windows? In dry months here in western Missouri, we have roadside brush fires from these. And on 15 September 2022, 73 families lost their vehicles from a field fire at the Robinson Family Farm in Bell County, Texas, due to one of these. How many of the tragic and expensive U.S. wildfires had similar causes? Arson-by-smoker is a very real danger, affecting children and their parents, not to mention your insurance premiums.
As of the 2023 elections, 24 states, Guam, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands – almost half of our country – have added recreational marijuana to this poisonous environmental danger. However, recreational marijuana is not just a respiratory irritant — it also affects the young, developing brains of future generations of citizens (not to mention the older smokers themselves). What will happen to the development of these youngsters’ minds after years of constant oxygen deprivation and brain-cell alterations due to the psychoactive THC (delta-9-TetraHydroCanibinol) poisons in recreational marijuana smoke?
On the national level, the dangers of tobacco smoking have been assigned to the jurisdiction of the CDC/Surgeon General and the FDA, and the only “solutions” have been to place written warnings or graphic pictures of cancerous body organs on the sides of packs of smokes, and run TV and internet commercials. Is this because so many presidential-administration members, Congressional legislators, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Health and Human Services/Center for Disease Control (DHHS/CDC) officials, and Cabinet members, are themselves smokers, both tobacco and marijuana? Having the scientific evidence we have about the toxicity of tobacco smoke, this is unacceptable. And having the evidence we have about the mind-altering dangers of recreational marijuana, this is tragic. These federal agencies empowered with the responsibility of protecting the health of U.S. citizens are cowering to the pressure of the tobacco- and marijuana-industry lobbyists and the vocal minority of those smokers who demand their “right” to smoke.
Adding insult to injury, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with the blessing of its former Commissioner Dr. Scot Gottlieb, “(i)n July 2017…announced a new comprehensive plan that places nicotine — and the issue of addiction — at the center of the agency’s tobacco-regulation efforts.” This statement is part of the second paragraph of an FDA presentation entitled “How Could Lowering Nicotine Levels in Cigarettes Change the Future of Public Health?”
(https://www,fda.gov/tobaccoproducts/newsevents/ucm600972.htm ) The first sentences of this FDA feature ask, “What if we could prevent over 8 million tobacco-related deaths in the United States by the end of the century? What if a federal regulation could help to create a future in which cigarettes were no longer responsible for lifetimes of addiction and disease?” This is another bureaucratic smokescreen – literally. Notice the responsibility-evading adverbs “could.” Maybe they “could,” but they won’t, because the tobacco is still being smoked !
A smoker’s “right to smoke” ends when the smoke leaves the tip of the cigarette, cigar, pipe, joint, or electronic device, or the mouth of the smoker, and drifts to other people and surfaces. Since smoking is a public health issue and, consequently, a public health hazard, especially to the younger members of our society and adults unwillingly forced to breathe the toxins, the EPA, the FDA, the CDC/Surgeon General, and even Congress, need to accept their responsibilities and temper the tobacco lobbyists and the recreational-marijuana states’ misguided legislation by banning smoking — tobacco, electronic and marijuana. Smoking has been around the U.S. since before we became the U.S. 246 years ago. However, the FDA is 117 years old, having been created with the passage of the Food and Drugs Act in 1906; the CDC is 75 years old, being established as the Communicable Disease Center in 1948; and the EPA recently passed its 50th anniversary, being created on December 2, 1970. How much longer do we need to endure the hazards of inaction on the part of our federal legislators and regulators resulting in an unhealthy national policy of acceptable child endangerment and child abuse, as well as adult abuse and arson endorsement?
If the well-established tobacco industry and the fledgling, burgeoning recreational-marijuana and “electronic”-cigarette industries want to continue to offer their products, it’s time to require Congress, the EPA, the FDA, the DHHS/CDC, and the Surgeon General to create the appropriate legislation and regulations to allow nicotine, recreational marijuana and electronic nicotine in either approved pill/capsule form, like aspirin, or in liquid form, like alcoholic beverages. It could even be offered in chewing gum. And for those who insist on being able to breathe in these toxins, offer it in inhaler form, as well. That way, the only people directly affected by the tobacco, recreational-marijuana and electronic chemicals are the consumers themselves. Nicotine, vaping and marijuana addicts will still be able to get their fixes. And second-hand and third-hand smoke would be banished to history, as they should be.
On a related note: Although there is little if any scientific medical benefit to tobacco, I truly believe in the researched and proven benefits of medical marijuana, and as non-smoking forms of medical marijuana are developed, the federal government and its relevant agencies should hasten the regulation and nationwide availability of the benefits of medical marijuana in non-smoking form, as just noted.
The recreational-marijuana states praise the amount of tax income the sale of this toxin produces. Let’s look at this intelligently and fourth-dimensionally: How much future tax money is going to be required to take care of those with mental-health issues who grew up breathing not only first-hand marijuana smoke but also second- and third-hand recreational marijuana smoke? And with an increasing amount of the future population requiring mental-health care — smokers who will be draining tax resources instead of being productive society members and supplying tax revenue — where will this needed tax money come from? Look at the money already being spent and lost taking care of the members of society harmed by tobacco smoke.
The simple fact that recreational marijuana has been made legal in so many states where the proponents have been clandestinely smoking it for so many years is reasonably clear evidence of the fact that otherwise-intelligent minds have already been detrimentally (emphasis on “mentally”) altered. According to Sean Williams of The Motley Fool, in an August 26, 2018, piece: “…marijuana use in adolescents has been shown in select studies to hurt long-term memory. Furthermore, a Denver Post article from 2017 notes that traffic fatalities linked to marijuana rose sharply in every year following recreational legalization.” And on 25 September 2022, according to the 24 February 2023 Manchester, CT, Journal Inquirer, a motorcyclist died and a passenger in the car he hit at 99 mph was killed when the motorcyclist’s “…reaction time and judgment were likely impacted by the presence of alcohol and THC in his system,” the police reported. Also, as reported by Motorious on 16 October 2022, “A Tesla Model 3 driving at over 100 mph in Corvallis, Oregon recently crashed late at night.” Battery parts were thrown about the scene, including into nearby homes. “Police had the driver tested for substances and it was determined he had been driving while impaired by marijuana.” The “I” in DWI can now include “inhaled.”
After the EPA was created, pesticides, industrial pollution and the automobile were their first targets. Tobacco-smoke-poison-versus-healthy-lungs was not even in their sights. It should have been — scientific evidence backed up by over 400,000 smoking-related deaths a year in the U.S. (FDA figures) proves it is just as toxic, if not more so, than the DDT, burning-sewage-dump rivers and smog the EPA focused on in its infancy.
According to the first part of the Mission Statement of the U. S. EPA: “The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. EPA’s purpose is to ensure that all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work…” Really?! To continue to allow tobacco, recreational-marijuana and e-cigarette smoking constitutes criminal negligence, felonious assault, child abuse and child endangerment by our federal officials and the smokers themselves, and should be prosecuted as such.
In the Mission Statement of the FDA, it states: “The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human…drugs… FDA also has responsibility for regulating the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect the public health…” Since both nicotine and marijuana have been proven to be addictive drugs, this makes both the FDA and the EPA responsible for the elimination of these airborne poisons.
When I speak to smokers about their toxic habit, they will invariably and almost unanimously admit that they know it’s hurting them and they should quit. It’s time we help them. Future generations demand it — and current generations will also benefit. Then and only then will we see former FDA Commissioner Gottlieb’s dreams come true.
Some time back, on the evening news, there was a report about Attorney Mike Moore, the “mastermind” behind the $206-billion settlement against “big tobacco” in 1998. As detailed in Wikipedia, “big tobacco,” in their Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), “the four largest United States tobacco companies — Philip Morris Inc., R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, the ‘original participating manufacturers’, referred to as the ‘Majors’ — (settled with) the attorneys general of 46 states. The states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health-care costs. In exchange, the companies agreed to curtail or cease certain tobacco marketing practices, as well as to pay, in perpetuity, various annual payments to the states to compensate them for some of the medical costs of caring for persons with smoking-related illnesses. The money also funds a new anti-smoking advocacy group, called the Truth Initiative (interesting name for a tobacco-supported smokescreen), that is responsible for such campaigns as ‘Truth’.” Note that there is nothing in this 25-year-old settlement that bans smoking. Was the MSA merely job security for attorneys representing smoking-related medical problems? What about those who have second- and third-hand “health-care costs” who don’t receive Medicaid? Except for making Attorney Moore and his law firm quite wealthy on the backs and lungs of smokers, what good was this hollow settlement?
I started researching this smoking-vs-health issue in 2010. After a mid-2018 revision, I mailed appropriately edited copies to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, DHHS Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. I sent a follow-up report to Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC in November of 2019. I even sent a copy to former First Lady Melania Trump, to see if she would make it part of her “Be Best” child-advocacy program. Out of the six letters sent, my only two replies were form-letter responses from underlings at the EPA and the CDC.
The EPA reply came from David R. Rowson, Director of the Indoor Environments Division of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. One sentence of his EPA reply was, “…EPA does not have any authority to regulate or require action to reduce exposure to tobacco or marijuana smoke.” But it has been regulating exposure to motor-vehicle and industrial-smokestack smoke for nearly half a century?! What’s wrong with this picture? Surely I’m not being lied to? And the CDC reply came from Sandra Cashman, MS, Executive Secretary of the Office of the Chief of Staff. Aside from a paragraph that started by admitting that “Tobacco use is a pervasive and serious problem in the United States,” her reply simply referred me to their “Tips from Former Smokers” program on their website and on TV commercials.
And on September 12, 2018, FDA Commissioner Gottlieb publicly announced that “FDA takes new steps to address epidemic of youth e-cigarette use, including a historic action against more than 1,300 retailers and 5 major manufacturers for their roles perpetuating youth access. Warning letters and civil money penalty complaints to retailers are largest coordinated enforcement effort in agency history; FDA requests manufacturers provide plan for mitigating youth sales within 60 days; warns it may restrict flavored e-cigarettes to address youth epidemic.” The press release further stated, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced a series of critical and historic enforcement actions related to the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to kids.” A “critical and historic action” would have been the banning of smoking altogether. This FDA “action” is another smokescreen, most likely paid for by tobacco lobbyists.
Aside from those six just named above, I have since sent copies of this report to all of the people, government agencies and organizations in positions of power, authority or influence listed below. I’ve received no reply from anyone. Maybe they’re all still smokers?! Or maybe they don’t want to “bite the hand that feeds them”? As President Biden recently said, “Silence is complicity.” Does no one in a position of authority or influence care? Or do they clandestinely enjoy approving of child endangerment and child abuse and, by extension, adult abuse? They are:
Former U.S. Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler (R);
Current U.S. Missouri Representative Mark Alford (R);
Former U.S. Missouri Senator Roy Blunt (R);
Current U.S. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R);
Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R);
Former Missouri State Representative Patricia Pike (R);
Current Missouri State Representative Dane Diehl (R);
The Late Missouri State Senator Ed Emery (R);
Current Missouri Senator Rick Brattin (R);
2022 Missouri Senate Candidate Trudy Busch-Valentine (D);
Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R);
Current Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R);
The American Medical Association;
The American Lung Association national organization and its Missouri Chapter;
The American Heart Association;
Bikers Against Child Abuse (now there’s irony!);
CBS’s Inside Edition, and the Kansas City CBS affiliate, KCTV5 (“KCTV5 Cares”);
ABC’s Good Morning America, 20/20, Primetime and Nightline, Investigative Journalist Jeff Rossen of ABC’s Rossen Reports; and the Kansas City ABC affiliate, KMBC Channel 9 (“Cares for Kids”, “Holding the Powerful Accountable”, and “Keeping You Safe”);
The national NBC TV News organization, including NBC’s Today Show, Investigative Journalist Jeff Rossen of NBC’s Rossen Reports (now with the ABC News network), NBC’s Meet the Press and Chuck Todd, NBC’s Medical Correspondent Dr. John Torres, and our regional NBC TV affiliate, KSHB 41 (“Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way”);
FOX4 News of Kansas City (“Working for you”);
Kansas City’s KCPT TV Programming Director Michael Murphy;
National Review Journal;
The Daily Beast;
The Springfield (MO) News-Leader newspaper;
The Cass and Bates Counties (MO) Tribune & Times newspaper;
Shawnee Mission KS School District, Dr. Michael Fulton, Superintendent;
Dr. Chris Jensen; Blue Valley KS Science Teacher;
Goddard, KS, School Board President Kevin McWhorter;
Dr. Tracy Platt, Smithville MO School District;
Superintendent Frank Harwood, DeSoto KS School District;
Board of Education President Mr. Shannon Wickliffe, Olathe KS School District;
The ChildUSA organization;
The U.S. Our Children’s Trust organization, Julia Olson, Exec. Dir. & Chief Legal Counsel;
TIME magazine;
The Marijuana Policy Project;
The Huffington Post Deputy Opinion Editor Chloe Angyel and Deputy Personal Editor Emily McCombs;
“Time’s Up Now” movement and “anti-smoker” Gabrielle Union;
Yahoo! News
Acreage Holdings President George Allen;
California environmental activist Erin Brockovich; and
The late Actor Ray Liotta, c/o Untitled Entertainment in Beverly Hills, CA.
An interesting thing about the CDC’s “Former Smokers” commercials: I did see one of these on TV a while back — the one about Nathan, the 54-year-old Oglala Sioux gentleman who died from second-hand smoke — and right after that commercial was another one about actor Ray Liotta who was able to quit smoking using a product called CHANTIX®. (Ray could have quit smoking without Chantix if he wanted to, but that’s another story. And now, he’s dead from respiratory-related issues.) Something about the timing of those two back-to-back commercials caused me to wonder: Are our Congressional representatives and senators, as well as EPA, CDC and FDA executives and others in positions of power and influence, getting kickbacks — oops, sorry, “lobbyist contributions” — from companies like Chantix (and maybe even the “Majors”) who profit from those who continue to smoke? If smoking were outlawed, as it should be, this source of corruption would disappear.
One more interesting thing about smoking deaths and their preventability: According to CDC figures, first-hand smoking directly results in approximately 440,000 deaths in the U.S. every year, with another 41,000 dying from second-hand smoke, as the recent death of my wife can verify. Gun violence, on the other hand, kills about 40,000, while according to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS), highway fatalities cost us less than 40,000. While I don’t minimize the tragedy caused by firearms and motor vehicles, it’s plain to see that by using these federally compiled figures and statistics, smoking kills over 10 times more of our citizens than either gun violence or traffic crashes, yet gun violence and highway fatalities get the publicity. Why is that? There is something seriously wrong with this picture. “Freedom of the press” carries with it the responsibility of the press, and they are failing miserably in this regard — sensationalizing the shootings and gory wreck scenes (“We must caution you – you may find this story and these pictures disturbing.”) while ignoring the individuals gasping for their last breath under hospice care. And now we have “vaping” deaths being caused by electronic cigarettes, especially among our young, plus those with “underlying conditions” dying during our current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the traffic fatalities caused by “high” drivers. Will this wake up our federal and state agencies responsible for our health? It hasn’t yet. Former President Trump signed federal legislation raising the age at which people can buy these vaping killers, when he should have been banning them completely, but since his wife is one of those at the top of the Don’t-Care List, and with his environmental record, that’s not surprising. Will our leaders, legislators, regulators and media influencers ever learn?
Lastly, I’ve been told by those who don’t understand this smoking ban that “It’s just like Prohibition, and it won’t work.” No, it isn’t like Prohibition, because the alcohol restricted by Prohibition didn’t directly, immediately and adversely affect bystanders like smoking does. And, as previously noted, acceptable substitutes for smoking can be made available that will spare non-smokers. Prohibition was an attempted solution to a perceived moral issue; a smoking ban will solve a real physical, social, financial and medical issue.
I remember once when I was six years old, Dad took the family to a wedding reception in a large church hall — a lady in his office was getting married. After a couple of hours in the hall, with the smoke getting thicker by the minute, I decided to try to find somewhere with cleaner air. Just outside the hall doors was a large coat closet in the lobby, so I went in there. When I walked in, there was already a girl about my age sitting cross-legged on the floor under a row of coats. After we introduced ourselves, I asked her what she was doing there, and she replied, “I had to get away from all that smoke; I couldn’t breathe and was starting to choke.” So we sat there on the floor talking for about a half hour, when people began coming in and getting their coats. Figuring the reception was about over, and feeling better, we decided to go back to our tables so our families could get ready to leave.
There isn’t a child alive who asked to be born. Nor is there a child alive asking to be abused and endangered. Maybe all we need to do to understand why smoking is still legal is to “follow the money…” But first, our health-related government agencies, Congress, and others in positions of authority should be investigated for failing to do the right thing — what should have been done decades ago — and that is to ban smoking. Our children deserve no less, no matter what their age is. And they shouldn’t have to hunt for places with cleaner air when they’re out in public or attending social functions. We can do a manipulative-money hunt later.
-Sincerely, Rodney Rom, Butler Mo.
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