The Shocking Ingredients in Cigarettes

If you think cheap cigarettes are simply dried tobacco leaves rolled in paper, you’re about 597 ingredients off. The tobacco industry has become master mixologists with the additives.

Some ingredients are added for flavor, but research has shown that the key purpose of using additives is to improve tobacco’s potency resulting in increased addictiveness–and the additives they choose to use are dreadful.

I remember hearing something about “the list” back in the 1990s when tobacco companies first started being taken to task for their dastardly ways, but seeing the list again now that I’m educated about chemistry and health, I am absolutely staggered. It’s amazing this isn’t in the news everyday. It’s bad enough that many of these ingredients are approved for use in food–but that they haven’t been tested for burning? When burnt, the whole mess results in over 4,000 chemicals, including over 40 known carcinogenic compounds and 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

You know it’s bad when the Phillip Morris website has this posted on their homepage: Nearly 5,000 chemicals have been identified in tobacco smoke to date. Public health authorities have classified between 45 and 70 of those chemicals, including carcinogens, irritants and other toxins, as potentially causing the harmful effects of tobacco use.

According to Dr. and Mrs. Quit, also known as Lowell Kleinman, M.D., and Deborah Messina-Kleinman, M.P.H., from the Quit Smoking Center, cigarette flavors have gone through many changes since cigarettes were first made. Initially, cigarettes were unfiltered, allowing the full “flavor” of the tar to come through. As the public became concerned about the health effects of smoking, filters were added. While this helped alleviate the public’s fears, the result was a cigarette that tasted too bitter.

The solution to the bitter-tasting cigarette was easy–have some chemists add taste-improving chemicals to the tobacco. But once they got rolling they figured out they could really maximize the whole addiction part, what a hook. They found that a chemical similar to rocket fuel helps keep the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature, which allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily. Or how about ammonia? Adding ammonia to cigarettes allows nicotine in its vapor form to be absorbed through the lungs more quickly. This, in turn, means your brain can get a higher dose of nicotine with each inhalation. Now that’s efficiency.

For a start, here’s the who’s who of the most toxic ingredients used to make cigarettes tastier, and more quickly, effectively addictive:

Ammonia: Household cleaner.
Arsenic: Used in rat poisons.
Benzene: Used in making dyes, synthetic rubber.
Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid.
Carbon monoxide: Poisonous gas.
Cadmium: Used in batteries.
Cyanide: Lethal poison.
DDT: A banned insecticide.
Ethyl Furoate: Causes liver damage in animals.
Lead: Poisonous in high doses.
Formaldehyde: Used to preserve dead specimens.
Methoprene: Insecticide.
Maltitol: Sweetener for diabetics.
Napthalene: Ingredient in mothballs.
Methyl isocyanate: Its accidental release killed 2000 people in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
Polonium: Cancer-causing radioactive element.

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Marijuana Smoke in MediLeaf Legal Fight

More than two years after a Gilroy medical marijuana dispensary was shut down for operating without a city business license, a state appellate court has ruled that city officials were in the right by declaring it a “public nuisance” despite prolonged objections by the club’s operators.

In a 36-page opinion filed Tuesday by California’s Sixth District Court of Appeals, Associate Justice Wendy Clark Duffy wrote that the City of Gilroy acted within its power and broke no laws when it ordered MediLeaf to close its doors in August 2010.

City officials are confident the decision is the final nail in the coffin for MediLeaf’s fight, with City Attorney Andrew Faber calling the ruling “a complete judicial victory” in an email sent to Gilroy City Council members Tuesday.

Berliner Cohen, the city’s hired legal firm, is still compiling the final financial tally for Gilroy’s battle to close the dispensary, City Finance Director Christina Turner said. The city spent $202,500 in legal fees as of July, according to attorney bills obtained by the Dispatch, though City Councilman and attorney Perry Woodward predicts the total could approach $300,000 when all is counted.

Though Council members weren’t smiling over the price tag, there were still cheers for the city’s apparent victory.

“Of course, I’m happy. I never thought otherwise to be honest with you. From the beginning, I thought we were well within the law,” Councilwoman Cat Tucker said. “It’s a shame that it would cost so much money and take so long, but we did what we had to do and what the majority of the community wanted us to do.”

MediLeaf reps still have 30 days to submit their case to the state Supreme Court.

“Thirty days before I get a full sigh of relief,” Tucker said.

“I’m very happy that the courts agreed,” Mayor Al Pinheiro wrote in an e-mail Thursday, “and yet it is sad that ultimately the city of Gilroy had to spend so much money in protecting the right to decide what is best for Gilroy.

MediLeaf’s defendants – led by founder Goyko “Batzi” Kuburovich – asserted “various claims of error,” Justice Duffy wrote, including arguments that the dispensary should be allowed under the city’s zoning ordinance, and that prohibiting their operation “was unconstitutional.”

The court ruled their claims were “without merit.”

“We reject appellants’ challenges and conclude that the court properly found that Gilroy was entitled to judgment on its public nuisance claim,” Duffy wrote. “Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment.”

Woodward said the court made the correct decision, but maintained his gripe with the city’s battle against the dispensary has always focused on its climbing legal bills. Woodward – a partner at San Jose law firm Terra Law LLP, said he hasn’t seen the city’s final bill but predicted the $202,500 figure would be “far less” than what it would end up paying. He said the legal battle’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

“When we made this decision, we were laying off firefighters, laying off police officers,” Woodward said. “And to me, it’s just not money well spent.”

Woodward argues the city probably would have been better off allowing the dispensary to operate, though under strict guidelines.

“I would have liked to have seen what was being discussed at the time: I would have preferred to see the city adopt an ordinance that would have strictly regulated the operation, that would have limited the operations to one or two (locations),” Woodward said. “The next thing I had hoped to do was to impose a tax so we could have an additional source of revenue.”

He added, “It seems that the opposition to it was just a philosophical opposition to medical marijuana. So I’d like to get the money back.”

Woodward laughed that a refund was out of the question. And he said Gilroy’s battle against marijuana was far from finished.

“No, of course it’s not over. The issue of medical marijuana is going to go on for all of our lives,” he said. “The younger generation doesn’t see it in the same terms.”

Gilroy isn’t the only spot keeping a close on the MediLeaf saga. Woodward and City Administrator Tom Haglund have also been contacted by the Los Angeles Times for an article examining California cities’ battles with recent marijuana issues, the Dispatch has learned.

While no other marijuana dispensaries exist in Gilroy, Woodward predicted the drug will be fully legalized within the next 10 years, which would make Gilroy’s fight against MediLeaf seem ancient.

“We’re going to look back on this on the same way we look back on prohibition in my view,” he said.

Woodward said the MediLeaf case had some factors that “could be attractive” to the state Supreme Court, but agreed the legal debate was probably dead.

“The supreme court takes very few cases. Any case going to the supreme court is an extreme long shot,” he said.

MediLeaf opened Nov. 9, 2009 without a business license at 1321 First St. because they were operating as a nonprofit, the shop’s owners argued.

Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy turned down the city’s request for a preliminary injunction Dec. 15, 2009 that would have shut down MediLeaf pending a trial, partly because of accusations that the city had violated the Brown Act during a closed session discussion Nov. 16.

The Council voted 4-3 in open sessions Dec. 30 to approve litigation. Mayor Al Pinheiro and Council members Cat Tucker, Dion Bracco and Bob Dillon voted yes in favor of the resolution. Woodward, along with Councilmen Peter Arellano and Craig Gartman voted against it.

MediLeaf was forced to close Aug. 9, 2010 after Superior Court Judge Kevin McKenney issued an eight-page order on July 20 upholding the city’s claim that MediLeaf was operating illegally following a Gilroy lawsuit.

Attorneys for MediLeaf filed a notice to appeal the prohibitory injunction the day after McKenney’s Santa Clara County court decision and requested the dispensary be allowed to operate during the appeals process. McKenney denied MediLeaf’s request on Sept. 13, 2010.

The dispensary maintains it used a not-for-profit model and therefore did not require a business license.

On Dec. 9, 2010, dozens of undercover law enforcement officers from across Santa Clara County raided eight homes and MediLeaf offices in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and San Jose as part of an eight-month investigation of illegal sales of marijuana and money laundering into the medicinal pot club.

The MediLeaf search warrant obtained by the Dispatch names the six people who law enforcement refused to release at the time of the warrant: founder Goyoko “Batzi” Kuburovich, 50, Patricia Kuburovich, 46, Kristel Kuburovich, 21, Neil Forrest, 58, Bruce Ziegelman, 53, and Kevin Keifer, 54.

Charges have not been filed against MediLeaf’s proprieters as of Thursday, said Lisa McCrary, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

Calls to “Batzi” Kuburovich and Forrest on Thursday were not returned as of press time.

Councilman Dion Bracco, who along with Councilman Woodward is running for the city’s mayoral seat in 2012, called Tuesday’s court decision “good news,” and said he doesn’t think MediLeaf will have a chance to continue its fight.

“According to our legal counsel, they don’t believe the high court would even listen to it,” Bracco said. “They’ve lost every step of the way. Who would believe they would finally win something?”

Bracco also called the city’s hefty legal bills “the cost of doing business.”

“A city can operate as it sees fit. They can’t just come in and do what they feel like and get away with it,” he said. “The way it’s set up, they have nothing to lose by filing these frivolous lawsuits. We have to defend our city. Otherwise, people can do whatever they feel like and get away with it.”

He added, “If you’re going to run your city according to price sheet or make decisions on how much it costs someone to fight your decisions, I don’t know what type of city you’d be living in.”

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Appeal Against Cigarette Companies

Jerry Weingart has been waiting more than a decade for the companies he believes killed his wife to be brought to justice. But at 89, the Boynton Beach man doesn’t have the stamina to spend the whole day in court. Holding a cane, he listened on Wednesday morning while one of his attorneys explained to a jury why three Pall Mall cigarette makers should be held responsible for his wife’s death. But Weingart headed home before tobacco attorneys launched their full counterattack

Like in the two other tobacco trials that have been held in Palm Beach County, millions of dollars are at stake.

The cases are among roughly 8,000 that were spawned statewide when the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 threw out a $145 billion jury verdict in a class-action lawsuit. While upholding the jury’s findings that cigarette-makers lied about the dangers of smoking, the high court ruled that each smoker had to prove how they were uniquely harmed by cheap cigarettes.

Weingart’s attorneys said they are seeking damages for the years smoking took off Claire Weingart’s life. Instead of spending their “golden years” together, Jerry Weingart became widower in 1997 when his wife of 54 years died at age 73, attorney Hardee Bass told jurors.

A heavy smoker for roughly 50 years, she didn’t stop smoking even when lung cancer spread to her brain, Bass said. She began smoking in the 1940s when no one suspected smoking posed any health risks. She was powerless to stop because cigarette-makers R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and Lorillard — the companies that produced her brands of choice — turned her into an addict, he said.

“This case is about a promise the cigarette industry made to a generation of people — the World War II generation,” Bass said during opening arguments. “It’s about the lies they told a generation of smokers. It’s about the truth they hid from a generation of smokers.”

Using company documents, he showed how the companies orchestrated a misinformation campaign to counter growing evidence that smoking kills.

“Claire Weingart was an industry success story,” he said.

Tobacco industry attorneys countered that there is no evidence Weingart was influenced by the documents. Attorney Kenneth Reilly acknowledged that tobacco chiefs made some “wrong-headed” decisions. But, he said, there is no evidence Weingart knew about the statements or used them to justify her decision to keep smoking. Like millions of other smokers, she could have quit.

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