Stinky Sulfur Award: Nicotine Sellouts and How I Quit Two Decades Ago!

By The People's Chemist

There’s a growing group of wellness influencers, online doctors, chiropractors, and self-described “biohackers” pushing pharmaceutical nicotine patches and gum as tools for focus, motivation, and even immune health.

I can’t look away anymore.

Team Nicotine has somehow rebranded addiction as self-improvement and sold it back to the alternative health crowd with prettier packaging and softer words. You can smell the betrayal through your phone. It’s the same playbook used by Big Tobacco, Big Sugar, and Big Pharma. And since they have all the money, it’s apparently easier to join them than fight them.

Let’s start with Dr. Brian Ardis.

Dr. Ardis is the nerdy chiropractor who looks like he spent too much time at church camp and hasn’t bought a new shirt since The Cure released Mixed Up. He promotes low-dose nicotine patches for long-COVID brain fog, sleep issues, and has even claimed they can cure Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and MS. He’s also gone on record saying nicotine can “dissolve nanotechnology” from COVID vaccines.

There’s too much bullshit to wade through here.  Anyone who says “nanotechnology” nonstop in public is suffering from a Freudian slip involving their anatomy and their bank account.

Then there’s the Zynfluencer himself: Tucker Carlson.

From politics to product endorsements to wellness theories, Tucker is the frat boy you want to punch just to get him to shut up. I don’t care if he’s talking about world peace—please stop talking. 

But no, now he’s talking about nicotine too. He launched his own nicotine pouch brand and described it as “super important” and something that makes people “happier,” with the same confidence he applies to geopolitics and gun policy.

 

And here’s the annoying part: he’s not wrong.

I loved nicotine.  My first drag from a Marlboro Red was on a fishing dock in Alabama.  It felt like pouring warm butterscotch over an ice-cream sundae. I knew instantly it was horrible for me. And I was right. That turned into a fifteen-year chewing-tobacco love affair involving spitting in cups, on sidewalks, or just gutting it. It’s a miracle I found a wife—barely.  I chewed nicotine gum to break the addiction, then went back to chewing tobacco to quit the gum, then cigarettes to quit the chew.  I didn’t know what was happening…

That’s the point.

The justification for nicotine today is wrapped in scientific word salad pushed by people sitting and spinning comfortably on Big Pharma’s lap. They usually point to a 2020 paper about nicotine interacting with acetylcholine receptors in lung immune cells.

Guess what? 

None of that matters when you’re sitting and spinning on Big Pharma’s lab.  Your opinion means nothing when you’re a mouthpiece for Pharma…

That paper showed a mechanism, not a treatment. Not an animal study. Not a clinical trial. Not a protocol. The authors were clear—it was a hypothesis. Using that paper to justify nicotine as medicine is like using a car manual to claim gasoline cures cancer.

Science papers explain chemistry. They don’t prescribe behavior. Like the Bible, you have to read them yourself or some jackass will interpret them for you while passing around an offering plate.

 

Let’s be clear: nicotine is one of the most addictive poisons on the planet.

- It stimulates tumor growth.


- It feeds cancer by growing blood vessels.


- It damages DNA.


- It helps cancer spread.

NEVER GET SICK

“Been taking cetirizine (Zyrtec). Just got Immune FX in the mail yesterday. Tried it. Can hardly believe after 24hrs: Sneezing GONE, runny eyes & nose NO LONGER. Damn it Shane you're good. Please don't stop.”

 

— RM, Memphis, TN

None of that disappears because the nicotine comes in a patch, gum, pouch, vape, or shiny white container instead of a cigarette.

Nicotine is not a wellness tool.  It’s a cancer enabler.

What makes this especially damning is that the wellness industry knows better. The same people warning you about smoking are now selling the chemical that made smoking deadly in the first place. That takes intelligence—but also a total lack of integrity.

Meanwhile, real immune-simulating and healing compounds actually exist and nearly guarantee you don’t get sick from biological nasties.

 

Take andrographis. It has a long history of traditional use and real research showing it regulates inflammation without addiction, cancer promotion, or neurological hijacking. It supports immune balance, protects the liver and kidneys, and doesn’t enslave your dopamine system. No pharmaceutical loyalty badge required.

If nicotine were medicine, history would show it. Instead, tobacco was known as a poison, a pesticide, and a suicide agent long before influencers existed. Nature rendered its verdict a long time ago.
For that reason, as The People’s Chemist, I proudly award the Stinky Sulfur Award™ to every wellness influencer, doctor, chiropractor, podcaster, and “biohacker” pushing nicotine patches and gum on behalf of the pharmaceutical nicotine industry.

Congratulations.

You didn’t elevate health.  You didn’t challenge the system.  You just repackaged addiction with better branding—and it still stinks.  You through the public under the pharmaceutical bus and put money and prestige over people and health.

NATURE'S ANTIBIOTIC AND ALLERGY RELIEF

NEVER GET SICK

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