- Christopher Smith, Editor-in-Chief
Weedkiller Chemical Found in 19 of 20 Beers and Wines Tested
One of the big beer companies just launched a TV ad campaign accusing a competitor using corn syrup in its brew. You've probably seen it - kings and castles and stuff... kinda funny in a vanilla Monty Python kinda way.
Not so funny is a more sinister ingredient recently found in 19 of 20 popular American beers and wines: Glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a carcinogenic ingredient in the weed killer called "Roundup".
Now don't blame me for saying it causes cancer: The World Health Organization said it first, as did the State of California, among others.
"The EPA has found that glyphosate is not carcinogenic to humans, but the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer ruled it was a probable human carcinogen in 2015. More recently, a study released February found that those exposed to glyphosate were 41 percent more likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma."
According to the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG):
"In 2018, a jury in California found that Roundup was a major cause of a man’s cancer, and awarded him $78 million in damages.
Thousands of people, mostly farmers, are now alleging that their incurable cancers may have been caused by Roundup
In January 2019, France banned the use of Roundup, citing it as a “serious risk” to human health.
After all this, you may wonder why we are reporting on glyphosate in beer and wine. We are The American Cannabis Report, after all.
The answer is simple: The alcohol industry, which emerged from (failed) Prohibition in the 1930's, creates, markets, and distributes a product that has not only been compromised by chemicals, it is highly addictive and has proven to be deadly on a massive scale. Yet it is not listed as a controlled substance.
That is more than a bit frustrating for the nearly 300,000 people employed in the cannabis industry, creating billions of dollars in sales and many tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues.
Each package of cannabis grown and sold legally in the US helps put foreign drug cartels and their street dealers out of business, away from our children's schools.
Not amount of cutesy kings-and-corn-syrup can bring back the more than 80,000 Americans who die each year (CDC figures) from excessive drinking, and approximately 10,000 that die each year driving while drunk.
IMAGE SOURCE: ECOWATCH