Sure, but an equivalent conventional high explosive would have likely killed all those 1,000 people, wouldn't it have?
> In a sense, chemical weapons are a kind of 'poor man's nuke'. Russia and America are standing down their chemical weapons because they have actual nukes, and don't need to also have 2nd rate knock offs.
The article explicitly notes this as well, that chemical weapons are only really used by weaker, less-monied, static-system militaries. And even then, they're only effective against similar adversaries, not against more modern enemies.
But "poor man's nuke" isn't even really a great characterization from the perspective of the US or Russia: with a modern military, chemical weapons do less damage than a cheaper, lighter, easier-to-deploy explosive. They're not a "poor man's nuke", they're just a poor man's weapon, period.