The US Government tried to kill weed smokers with a toxic chemical in the 1980s

Huh, thanks to my completely destroyed sleep schedule, i get to continuously watch infomercials about class-action lawsuits related to paraquat. No idea it was used in this context though.

When I googled the chemical it was just the typical whining about how its the only thing that works and is completely safe.

1980s? As the linked article points out, it was sprayed in the 1970s.

Reagan has much more to answer for.

The current US epidemic of Metabolic Disorder, killing way, way more than COVID-19, is a product of his Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz's program to institute absolutely massive over-production of corn. There was so much of it that it had to be turned into high-fructose corn sugar; then, a market for that had to be generated. So they demonized saturated fat and promoted adding sugar in its place.

And, here we are. Saturated fat has turned out to be totally harmless. What was blamed on it was caused, instead, by trans fats ("partially hydrogenated vegetable oil") added to replace it, and sugar.

Fred Kummerow spent his whole career, since the '50s, working to get trans fats out of the US diet, since he had proved they were responsible for the epidemic of circulatory disease. Trans fats were, finally, officially banned in 2017, although certain well-connected companies still have special permission to continue poisoning food with them.

To learn more about Metabolic Disorder, the best place I know to start is Robert Lustig's youtube lectures, and books. Short story: "sugar" is half glucose, which is relatively harmless, and half fructose, which your liver must process as a toxin. When fructose is ingested without enough fiber to slow its absorption, your liver takes a huge hit. It processes fructose by the same process as alcohol, and too much has the same effect as too much alcohol. (American children are getting liver disease just like alcoholics! Brits, Indians, and Pakistanis, too.) Take enough fiber with your sugar and you are OK. But all of industrial food processing is devoted to removing and throwing away fiber.

You can start healing your liver, fast, just by ensuring everything you eat has enough fiber: eliminate white flour, white rice, juice, and Red Bull. Livers have enormous regenerative ability, once you stop actively injuring them.

I don't see why this should come as a surprise. The government poisoned liquor during prohibition, injected plutonium into unwitting pregnant women, gave innocent people syphilis while giving them fake treatments to see how it killed them (and just for the heck of it because the victims were black), and on and on.

How is this any different than denatured alcohol today? You can buy 100% ethanol very cheap if it's been poisoned so you can't drink it.

If you choose to drink it despite a big skull and cross bones on it, was the US gov't trying to kill you?

Complete tripe. The article doesn't even work up the guts to make the claim that's made in the headline. And even in what it actually says, it goes too far by claiming the government was trying to "purposely" harm the lungs of pot smokers. The only argument supported by the evidence is that the government was trying to kill weed crops as an early drug war tactic, which backfired because it wasn't killing enough of the crops but rather contaminating them with toxins.

The rabid desire to spin "uS GoVeRnMenT iS EvIl@!" narratives everywhere there's a shadow on the wall is just so old hat.