No Smoke Without Fire: The Nicotine Saga

Smokers being unusually-resistant to COVID-19 was one of the plandemic’s most shocking but underreported discoveries

General structure and function of nicotine receptors in the body/ news-medical.net

When the coronapsychosis hit peak hysteria in early 2020, medical researchers began to observe a baffling medical anomaly regarding the supposedly novel and lethal respiratory disease. Regular smokers were grossly underrepresented among those hospitalised or seeking outpatient treatment.  

Researchers in China and France swiftly came to the startling conclusion that nicotine may have protected smokers against the novel coronavirus. The French study discovered that just 5 percent of those hospitalised for Covid-19 were daily smokers as opposed to 25.4 percent of the French population who puffed daily. According to lead researcher Zahir Amoura: “Basically, we have 80 percent fewer smokers in Covid patients than in the general population of the same sex and the same age.” 

Personally, I could not find a serious flaw in the French methodology and this excerpt shows why: 

Smoking status was collected and patients were specifically asked whether they were current smokers (and if so, to provide details on their smoking habits: daily or occasional smoking, type of tobacco products used, number of daily cigarettes), former smokers, or not smokers ever). Daily smokers are individuals reporting daily smoking or reporting a daily frequency of the number of cigarettes (manufactured or rolled) or other tobacco products (cigars, cigarillos, pipe, shisha). Occasional smokers are individuals reporting infrequent, but not daily smoking. The group of ex-smokers included anyone having smoked in the past, occasionally or daily, and had abstained from smoking prior to the time of investigation. The term "never smoker" designated people who had never smoked. The quantities of tobacco smoked were calculated using the following equivalences: 1 cigar = 1 cigarillo = 2 cigarettes.

The French general population was used as a reference to compute the Standardized Incidence Ratio (SIR).

According to RT.com, this discovery was backed by more “extensive data collected from the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and La Pitié” in April 2020 which revealed that “of 11,000 patients hospitalised with the virus, just 8.5 percent were smokers”. Two Chinese papers published earlier revealed similar patterns. One of them concluded that “only 12.6 percent of 1,000 Covid-19 patients were smokers, even though smokers comprised 28 percent of the Chinese population”. This was a highly counterintuitive revelation. 

It was postulated that the Sars Cov-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, loses out to nicotine in the race to bind with nicotine acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the human lung. That may explain why an unusually low percentage of smokers were relatively unaffected by Covid-19. Those hospitalised with Covid-19 usually had serious comorbidities. (I know one of them. He was hospitalised for weeks and later resolved never to take the vaccine).

The nAChRs are widely distributed throughout the body, including the brain, muscles, and peripheral nervous system. In the brain, nAChRs are involved in cognitive functions like attention and memory. In muscles, they mediate neuromuscular transmission, playing a crucial role in muscle contraction. These receptors are also found in other organs and tissues, where they influence various physiological processes, including heart rate, immune response, and gastrointestinal function.

Big Pharma was naturally alarmed by the French and Chinese studies. As far as I can tell, the version of the Chinese study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) omitted any reference to smokers or tobacco even as it shared the same title — Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China — with another version published by the Journal of Emergency Medicine. 

Was the NEJM involved in a cover-up which peaked during the coronavirus hysteria? Even the venerable Lancet was finally exposed to be nothing but a Big Pharma running dog during this period. 

After all, the fact that Sars Cov-2 — hyped as of the most lethal respiratory viruses in history — was having a tough time injuring or killing smokers should be blazing headline material worldwide. The coverup however went much deeper. 

Nicotine as a Medicine

Smoking is not exactly synonymous with nicotine, mass public perception notwithstanding. While regular smoking is indeed bad for health, with the fumes generated containing thousands of carcinogenic elements, nicotine by itself, when it is extracted from tobacco, has some startling therapeutic benefits. 

Nicotine is a natural liquid alkaloid found in several plants of the nightshade family. Besides tobacco plants, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, capsicum and tea all contain traces of nicotine. Nicotine, as a standalone compound, does not cause cancer!

As a powerful nootropic, nicotine improves memory, mental alertness, concentration and wakefulness and has been proven to boost energy levels. It may help those suffering from conditions like ADHD and a variety of “baffling” medical epidemics that are rising in tandem with mass vaccinations. 

Nicotine provides protection against neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It can suppress appetite, increase metabolism and thereby aid weight loss. Nicotine also triggers the release of dopamine which boosts mental well-being. In this capacity, it acts as a transient antidepressant. This is the reason why there are more than a billion smokers worldwide. 

Those engaged in risky, high octane or complex occupations often take up smoking or its less hazardous iteration, vaping, for these reasons. The same goes with individuals suffering from psychological traumas (e.g. PTSD) as well as recovering drug addicts.

Why Big Pharma Hates Nicotine

The global nootropics market was worth USD 40 billion in 2023. This valuation is expected to surge to USD 139 billion by 2032. As the human central nervous system (CNS) and mental condition continues to deteriorate due to a variety of factors, including hyper-vaccination, the sales of synthetic nootropics may vastly outpace current sales projections. Popular synthetic nootropics peddled by Big Pharma include Modafinil, Piracetam, Noopept, Phenylpiracetam, Adrafinil, Aniracetam, Phenibut and Semax, amongst others. Many of them have generated controversies of one kind or the other. 

All psychotropic and nootropic drugs have the potential to create lifelong dependencies, along with progressively adverse side effects. Yet, Big Pharma and its allies in the medical fraternity and media generally attack nicotine, which has far fewer long-term side effects, for being an addictive substance that must be burnt at the stake, pardon the cheesy pun. 

The potential use of nicotine as a natural nootropic remedy has not progressed beyond clinical trials, most of which had indeed returned positive results. The excuse has always been nicotine’s addictive quality. Nicotine inhalers were not dispatched to frontline emergency workers even after its benefits were provisionally validated by the French and Chinese studies in early 2020. 

After all, dead frontline workers made excellent optics for Big Pharma and its globalist overlords. They were the “heroes who died for us” when they weren’t performing macabre dance routines, leaving behind empty wards that the media claimed were piled up with the dead and dying.

Apart from nicotine inhalers, gums and lozenges, Big Pharma sells nasal and oral sprays for those who want to quit smoking. Altogether, the global nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) market was worth USD 3.2 billion in 2023. This is chump change for Big Pharma. Major players in the NRT market include usual suspects like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

Smokers who want to quit the habit however usually prefer vaping as it is cheaper, more effective and delivers the “throat hit” desired by Puffing Petes. This has caused a silent dilemma for Big Pharma. Why should it cede monopoly over a substance that may effectively shield users from bioweapons such as the Sars Cov-2 virus? 

At this juncture, the casual reader may wonder: What other medical benefits does nicotine provide? Personally, I am beginning to suspect that Big Pharma may have suppressed the results of many clinical trials related to nicotine. The unusually concerted and suspicious war on vaping worldwide is now beginning to make sense.  

The War on Vaping

Nearly 40 nations have banned vapes at the time of writing. None of them have banned tobacco. Rather unsurprisingly, nations which banned vaping “for the sake of youths” had no qualms about forcing Covid-19 killshots on children. 

The ongoing anti-vaping propaganda is simply riddled with national contradictions. Mexico, which is the global capital for a variety of drugs and violent cartels, somehow found it fitting and proper to prohibit vapes. It may be easier for underaged teens to access cigarettes and cocaine out there. 

Singapore is another textbook example on the contradictory war on vaping. According to the Singapore propaganda mouthpiece Channel News Asia (CNA), much “like conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes contain thousands of chemicals. There are several well-established classes of hazardous substances in vapes, including heavy metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (found in coal and fossil fuels) and fine particulate matter.”

 In the very next sentence, it proceeds into a disjointed tangent of factoids, Singapore-style:  

Heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium and chromium are linked to cancer. Cadmium, found commonly in batteries, can damage the airway, resulting in respiratory difficulty.

To begin with, cadmium-based batteries are not used in vape mods. Besides, vape batteries are always stored in separate, tightly-sealed compartments. Where the arsenic and chromium comes from is anyone's guess! Furthermore, the 18650 batteries used in vape mods do not contain cadmium. I have never seen one which did. But don’t take my word for it; here is what ChatGPT, which synthesises data from multiple sources, says:

As for polyaromatic hydrocarbons and fine particulate matter, there are too many culprits to be enumerated here, ranging from street food activity to the occasional haze blanketing Southeast Asia.

A hazy snapshot of Singapore. Source: Asia Society (2013).

The culprits behind the intermittent regional haze are oil palm plantations, some of whom were revealed to have Singaporean ownership or stake. So much for top-down health consciousness and policy rectitude!

Furthermore, the CNA avoids elaborating on e-liquids to settle the debate once and for all. Singapore has enough world-class laboratories to test e-liquids under a variety of conditions and thereby enumerate the “thousands of chemicals” they allegedly contain. 

It would take a long and tedious commentary to debunk the CNA report line by line but let’s head over to Thailand where vapes are also banned. Believe it or not, while vapes are strictly prohibited in Thailand, the production, procurement and use of cannabis is legal. 

The Thai government may ban recreational cannabis use by the year-end but may continue to allow its use for “medical purposes”. I guess all one needs is a doctor’s letter to get a steady supply of joints. 

According to former Thai Health Minister Dr. Cholnan Srikaew, this policy change was necessitated by wholly unexpected developments. “The misuse of cannabis has a negative impact on Thai children. In the long run it could lead to other drugs.”

No kidding, Sherlock! 

In any case, can anyone offer a remotely sensible reason on why the Thai government had considered vapes to be more harmful than cannabis in the first place? Why would any government ban something that helps smokers to quit the habit altogether, especially when long-term research on the subject remains suspiciously limited? Is it because Big Pharma and Big Tobacco share the same owners, embodied by none other than BlackRock? Even ChatGPT seems to shy away from the topic. 

The growing restrictions on vaping cannot be due to the presence of “thousands of (harmful) chemicals” as alleged by authoritarian governments. It has nothing to do with “protecting youths” as well. Unflavoured vape juices contain traces of nicotine (which can be regulated by the user) as well as base liquids such as propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerine which are extensively used in the pharmaceutical sector and in various food items ranging from candies, cakes, icing to various baked products. You can purchase propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine in a store specialising in bakery products.

Conclusion

In a 2021 report compiled by the CDC, 40.3% of vapers were found to be former cigarette smokers while 70% of vapers have had a history of smoking. Even among those who still smoked, the quantity of tobacco consumed was considerably lowered in tandem with vaping. With such rates of transition or progress, one can rightly deduce that vapes help to either quit, limit or outright avoid smoking. Apart from being a “healthier” alternative, vaping saves a lot of money in the process. 

In the final analysis, the ongoing war on vaping necessitates a radical rethinking on the subject of nicotine, especially after it had acted as a buffer against Covid-19.

What is Big Pharma hiding? Will nicotine be effective against other bioengineered viruses in the pipeline? Ever wondered why the very medical fraternity that once endorsed smoking are now becoming alarmist over nicotine? There is no smoke without fire here!

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