Welcome To Smoke And Illusion

Last modified August 28, 2008

A Welcome For Visitors & Thanks To Friends

• My newest eBook, The Cultivator's Handbook of Native, Natural Tobacco is now available as a download. Have you ever wished you had an alternative to paying high prices for tobacco products? Growing your own is ridiculously easy, and you can save thousands of dollars every year.
  
  Plus you'll be smoking real tobacco, the way the Native Americans did centuries ago. In this fully illustrated printable eBook you get step-by-step easy directions for growing your own true, native American tobacco, using seeds you can obtain for free from a university repository for heritage tobacco strains collected from around the world.
  
  You'll learn how to grow, harvest, flavor, roll and enjoy smooth, potent, real natural tobacco that can be grown under almost any conditions - you do NOT have to live in tobacco country, or even on a farm. An urban backyard or patio will do just fine - tobacco is a great potted plant, and just a couple of plants will yield all most smokers need for a year. If you have ever wanted a true, natural alternative to spending thousands of dollars on polluted commercial smoking products click here.
  
  
• It doesn't really matter whether oil is $100 or $50 a barrel see for yourself how any farm group or cooperative can produce ethanol A WHOLE LOT more cheaply with biomass tobacco than with corn. Biomass tobacco growers could produce between 100- 400 Tons of high quality biomass per acre, and distillers can produce roughly 750 gallons of ethanol per 100 tons of that biomass. Even the cellulose in tobacco is so easily digested that no expensive enzymes are needed to process it into ethanol or methane. All this at a fully accounted cost of under $0.75 per gallon of ethanol without government subsidies, using land that isn't suitable for food production.

• The unexamined but high potential of biomass tobacco for biogas production has significant implications for decentralized energy, food and fuel production in Africa, Asia and Latin America - anywhere, in fact, where people are poor in capital and resources and so the need for low-cost energy and food is great. It looks like small-scale, low tech, on-farm biogas energy production using tobacco biomass as the substrate or co-substrate may be a big part of the answer - it is low technology, has a carbon-positive footprint, is environmentally sound, and is very economical.

• To examine a newly-released, extraordinarily detailed scientific/technical assessment of the economic potential of biomass tobacco done in 1987 by the Floyd Agricultural Energy Cooperative click here. This document details the tobacco biomass protein extraction research program and also offers some detail on the tobacco biomass/ethanol experiments. You may also want to browse some Tobacco Bioenergy FAQs.

• New & important: click this link to browse a set of PDFs of some rare, very early published research on tobacco biomass documenting the practicality of biomass tobacco as a high-yield bioenergy resource crop. The yields-per-acre achieved by these NCSU researchers were incredible. Other documents linked here fill in the picture of tobacco's great potential as a source of low cost bioenergy as well as food-grade protein that's as rich in nutrients as soy or milk.

• Do you smoke and also have adult acne, rosacea, or wierd skin rashes? If you drink beer, do you itch and/or develop a rash almost immediately afterwards? Or, do you have serious heartburn and/or acid reflux? Especially - do you or does someone in your immediate family have an ulcer? With any of these symptoms you may be infected ( if you have an ulcer you ARE DEFINITELY infected) with the potentially deadly bacteria H. Pylori, and you need to know that smoking cigarettes, cigars or a pipe with an H. Pylori infection puts you at 11 times greater risk for gastric cancer than a non-smoker who isn't infected.
  
  The most common way that people originally get the bacteria H. Pylori is from fecally contaminated water, and then they pass it on to others - usually family members - through exchange of body fluids by kissing, sharing eating implements, etc. Once one person is infected it is passed down through multiple generations within their extended family. So if you or your parents or grandparents, or even an aunt or uncle, grew up in a rural or urban area with contaminated water, or have ever lived or traveled in a third world country, or have a family history of ulcers, you are very likely to be invisibly infected with H. Pylori. Gastric cancer resulting primarily from H. Pylori is the #2 cancer killer worldwide and is practically undetectable - until it is way too late to do anything about it. So while H. Pylori is a major cause of gastric cancer, and is strongly implicated in the genesis of other cancers, it is also very easy and cheap to test for and, if needed, to get rid of before cancer develops.
  
  Read more about the latest research regarding Helicobacter Pylori - it does a LOT more than just cause gastric and other kinds of cancer.
  
  
• Pesticide Residues And Additives In Commercial Cigarettes, Chewing Tobacco, & Snuffs May Be The Real Killers - And Moderate Natural Tobacco Use May Be OK;.
  • Are You A Smoker Facing Chemotherapy For What's Called An Estrogen-Loving Tumor? Are The Pesticides Hiding In Your Fat Cells Being Taken Into Account?
  • Are our troops in Iraq going to have the same health problems as those who fought the first Gulf War, caused by Pet Collars, DEET, Nerve Gas Antidote, and ... tobacco products?
    
    
• The Tobacco Industry Itself Says "The Manufacturer Has A Duty To Know His Product". Here's What You Need To Know About What The Tobacco Industry Has Known For Years About The Impact Of Pesticide Residues In Their Products On Human Beings.
  
• Do Not Go Quietly - A Personal Note, In Memory Of Many People.
  
• And finally, to lighten things up - anyone for a little Horsesailing?

Welcome!

This site is dedicated to breaking webs and veils of illusion created with great craft by skillful magicians. I refer to those marvellously skillful, truly magical illusions that have enabled the multinational tobacco industry to sell its enormously profitable, indisputably deadly products unhindered by effective regulation or liability, and here's the marvel - to get their millions of victims to each actually blame themselves and not the industry as they lie dying.

As I hope you'll agree after visiting, this site isn't anti-smoking, nor is it anti-tobacco. I've raised, given away, smoked and snorted, and built a small company on natural, organic, Native American tobacco, and there are millions of people who enjoy inhaling the smoke of burning leaves, just as there are many millions more who hate both the smell and the act. This site is dedicated to exposing a crime against both smokers and non-smokers, a crime which until now has not been understood by even the most ardent anti-smoker, a crime that has little or nothing to do with tobacco, and everything to do with ignorance, power, greed and institutional insanity.

The site is also dedicated to offering alternatives and solutions, including some high potential economic development possibilities for rural America and the third world involving a new way to look at tobacco - as a biomass energy resource.

Please forgive any of the author's shortcomings and remember that in order for an illusion to be great it has to enthrall everybody in the audience, and keep those enthralled unaware of the fact. However, all it takes to break even the greatest illusion is for everyone at once to catch a glimpse of the magician's hands at work. That's the purpose of this site. Thank you for visiting.

Site Launched 12/24/96

Send Me Your Thoughts

Would you like to send me a message concerning this site, including any links which I should add, research I should know about, or views that should be heard? If so, please send your comments - and thanks for browsing this site! My email address is bdrake@ktc.com I'll be improving this site as time goes along with links, graphics, and new information, including news from the tobacco products liability front, emerging research relevant to the tobacco and pesticides issue, and information on how people who enjoy tobacco smoking can grow their own personal crop of natural organic tobacco from Native American seeds rather than remaining dependent on commercial cigarettes.

After Reading This Stuff, Who Would Ever Invite Me To Speak?

If your organization, school or community would like to expose young people to a completely different perspective on smoking, tobacco, health, drugs, and personal choice, please contact Bill Drake at bdrake@ktc.com for my availability and fees, which are very flexible for non-profit and educational organizations. Internet-based distance learning and teleconferencing services are also available.

Friends, Mentors, Loves, & Fellow Travelers

I would like to especially thank Peter Schults, Lisle Johnson, Larry Breed, Nicholas Albery, and Bill Dufty for their invaluable help and special support at different stages of this project, always when I've needed it most.

It's my privilege to offer the names and to thank some of the many beautiful people who have loved me, taught me, helped and supported me on my journey, and who have given me reason to care for others. From my heart I give thanks for Lisle Johnson, Zachary Drake, my mother Laura Virginia Garrison, my father William Daniel Drake, my brother Jim Drake, my sister Mary Rachel Drake, my sister Joan Drake, my uncle and aunt Ralph and Sylvia Garrison, my brother Barry Lopez, my sister Sandy Lopez, my brother Robert Quong, Neil Kellman, Yvette Sherline, Dave Holman, my brother Harville Hendrix, Bob and Francis Shinn, Roy Shoemaker, my brother Danny Kornegay, Ricky Sullivan, Chappie Potter, Helen Hay, Jacque Hagan, Berti Ritterbeck, Robert Marion, Bob and Francis Buckle, Mick Countee, David DeReimer, Danny Secrist, John McCormick, Cheyenne, Manuel Villasenor, Wiley and Elizabeth Johnson, Madeline Hertzman, Michael Aldrich, Jim Hill, Terry Sage, Helen Hunt, Dick Johnson, Roger Davis, Wakako san, Pat Pearson, Barbara Moreland, Sandy Lopez, Michele and Jim Herling, Sally Perkins, Larry and Prairie Bishop, Jack Caspary, Wei Hui, Helen Nuchols, Norman and Babs Lane, Ed Wilson, Jean Houston, David Ray, Rives North, Baldo von Honeneugle, Joan Smith, Ken and Barbara Luboff, George Kapplinger, Barbara Harloff, Joyce Chittum, Janice Higgens, Eric Shinn, Jean McGimsey, Jerry Rubin, Joyce Chittum, Lee Schneer, Celestin M'baye, Mamadou Kourtou, Leonard Monroe, Judy Harbin, Martha Lee Tribble, Andy Weil, Penny Handler, Don Renton, Nora Sinclair, Carl Westmoreland, Hetty Lee Mitchell, Shane Lashley, John Hutchison, my brother Robert Klein, Tim Hagman, Hubert Humphrey, Peter Schults, Ferris Cronkhite, Esther Rickett, Jann Wenner, Walt Winkler, Barbara Taylor, Paul Abrams, Terry Nemeth, Sebastian Orfali, Beverly Potter, Roger Davis, Mike Lynch, Carlos de la Torre Henson, Linda Sunshine, Elizabeth Harris, Leon Barbee, Beth Huddleston, John Bing, Dietrich Hoffman, Ray Long, Anneke Heyliger, Kay Knickerbocker, Mike Sage, Terry Sage, Jun Nakagawa, Marty Wolf, Ramona Montemayor, Gail McMillen, Warren Wiggens, John Jonik, Melody Schneer, Hardy England, Gaye and Greg Reynolds, Bill Lacy, Georgine Sherriff, Marty Sternin, Linda Ames, Susan Caust, Fons Trompenaars, Oscar von Weerdenberg, Jaime Alonso Gomez, Alexander Campbell Baird, Maia Pulst, and other dear souls whose names and faces are in my heart but not on my lips at this moment.

I would like to honor my mother's ancestor, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Abolitionist Papers. At one point in the early 1850s William Lloyd had a $5000 Dead or Alive contract placed on his head by the Georgia State Legislature for his anti-slavery activism. My kinda guy. Luckily it was a long way from Georgia to Boston and WLG kept writing. Slavery finally ended too, sort of.

Key Words: cigarette, tobacco, pesticide residue, insecticide, carcinogenic, smoking, tar, nicotine, tobacco product, lung cancer, breast cancer, mutagenic, teratogenic, product liability, genetic defect, snuff, chewing tobacco, asbestos, synthetic tobacco, human rights, insecticide, benzo-a-pyrene, chlorinated hydrocarbon, organophosphate, carbamate, additive, synthetic smoking material, tobacco substitute, addiction, nicotine, toxic, neurotoxin, Native American, second-hand smoke, smoking and pregnancy, chromosome damage, testicular cancer, miscarriage, birth defect, diabetes, alternative energy, food-grade protein, biomass energy, organic tobacco, ethanol, methane, food-grade protein, natural gas, tax alternative, economic development, sustainable development, third world, natural tobacco, homegrown tobacco, nicotiana rustica, tabacum, glauca, attenuata, alata, shirazi, trigonophylla