RFK Goes After Elimination of Poppers
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, has promoted the falsehood that poppers cause AIDS.
Note: Poppers were one of the first sources of study in regard to AIDS and elimination.
Double Scorpio, the cult fave poppers brand known for its elevated approach to everyone’s favorite VCR cleaner, has announced that it is ceasing operations in what appears to be a broader crackdown by the Food and Drug Administration.
The brand posted a note to its website on March 13 stating that the company has “stopped all operations following a search and seizure at our offices by the FDA.” The note additionally said that while the company did not “have a lot of information to share,” they believe “that the FDA has performed similar actions towards other companies recently.”
A Friday report from Fast Company noted that other poppers companies had wiped their social media accounts this week. Two other poppers retailers, speaking anonymously, told Fast Company that other poppers companies have indeed been affected by the FDA. As Fast Company noted, the online poppers retailer Nitro-Solv appears to have shut down, and the website for Pac-West Distributing, one producer of the iconic Rush poppers, now has just a single GIF. Another producer of Rush, AFAB Industrial, appears to have shut down its email and reportedly denied a phone request for comment, per Fast Company.
Reached for comment by email, an FDA spokesperson told Them, “As a matter of policy, the FDA does not comment on possible criminal investigations.”
Despite their ubiquity at the club and in the bedroom, poppers have existed in a dubiously legal space since the enactment of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which outlawed the sale of butyl nitrite, one of the compounds that can be used as poppers. (The Crime Control Act of 1990 banned alkyl nitrite, another poppers compound.) However, there’s also a written exception in both laws for “commercial purposes other than use in products for inhaling or otherwise introducing it into the human body for euphoric or physical effects,” which is why poppers are often branded as “VCR cleaner” or “nail polish remover.”
Just a Reminder That RFK Jr. Thinks Poppers Cause AIDS
Trump’s pick for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services also has claimed that chemicals in water turn kids gay and refers to puberty blockers as “castration drugs.”
While the government has largely ignored this legal loophole, that could be changing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, the department that oversees the FDA, among other critical health-related agencies. Among various other conspiratorial anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs, RFK Jr. has repeatedly promoted the myth that poppers cause AIDS, writing in his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, that “heavy recreational drug use in gay men and drug addicts was the real cause of immune deficiency” and that he had never “found any evidence that HIV ever actually kills a T-cell,” despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence demonstrating that proven fact. In a speech in 2023, Kennedy additionally claimed, without evidence, that “100% of… the first thousand who had AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers,” adding that they were “part of a gay lifestyle.”
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