Regardless of his political achievements, Ford will always be remembered as a notorious abuser of alcohol and drugs. He also pled no contest to a marijuana-induced impaired driving conviction in 1999. Of course, he denied the charges to The Toronto Sun. “I’m dead serious. When I say no, I mean never. No question. Now I’m getting offended. No means no.” Ford later admitted to having a joint in his pocket.
Ford then had a drunken outburst at a Maple Leafs hockey game in 2006. Years later, The Star reported that he was asked to leave a party thrown by the Canadian military due to his sloppy behavior. Ford denied the allegations.
In October of 2011, police were dispatched to Ford’s home for a drunken domestic dispute. Early on Christmas morning of that year, the cops were called by Ford’s mother-in-law. Apparently, he had been drinking heavily and was attempting to take his kids to Florida against his wife’s wishes.
The famous politician made front page news around the world he announced that he was a recovering drug addict in 2013. Countless media outlets scrutinized a cellphone video of Ford smoking crack and threatening another person’s life. After initially denying the instance ever occurred, the Canadian figurehead admitted to doing the cocaine while intoxicated to The New York Times. He also confessed to covering it up, as well as public drunkenness and driving under the influence. Nevertheless, Mr. Ford would not step down as the mayor of Toronto.
Soon after the scandal, allegations began appearing from everywhere. A woman claimed Ford used a nasty 5-letter word to describe a woman’s genitalia and he later ran away from reporters, elbowing journalists while climbing a flight of stairs. To top it all off, Ford tackled an individual from the Toronto City Council after being stripped of his membership.
In 2014, a second video appeared of Ford smoking a crack pipe. Rob was forced to take a leave of absence from his office and enter a rehabilitation center for drug addiction for two months.
That same year, while clean the recovering drug addict was diagnosed with cancer. Had the man not subjected his body to such harsh narcotics and alcohol, would his immune system have been strong enough to fight off the fatal cancer?
Would Ford Have Died of Cancer If He Were Not a Drug Addict?
The connection between smoking crack and cancer was initially researched in the Eighties. “We know that cocaine produces significant cellular changes, and we identified it as a carcinogen over a decade ago,” said Dr. Herbert Rosenkranz, professor and chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Cornell University explained to USA Today. “But the variables involved in linking specific amounts of cocaine, periods of usage, and factoring in individual genetic differences was well beyond what we could accomplish at that time. We established that cocaine has an 80% probability of being carncinogenic in rodents.”
Roughly a decade later, Ph.D. cancer researcher Rebecca Nelson told the British Journal of Cancer that she agreed with Rosenkranz’s findings. Data showed that the illegal drug causes an increased risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in the body. It was reported that people who smoked crack were at a significantly higher risk of getting cancer than nonusers. Multiple studies showed that human cells try to fight off cocaine’s antigens by attacking them. As a result, drug addiction causes cells to divide, increasing the risk of cancer.
Similarly, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute performed a study relating crack to cancer in 1998. It was shown that using crack causes the same precancerous conditions that are caused by cigarettes. As a direct result, smoking crack leads to lung cancer.
The following year, the American Journal of Surgery published work pointing to an astounding connection between powdered cocaine use and pancreatic cancer. The researchers claimed “there might be a possibility that chronic cocaine exposure predisposes to the development of pancreatic adenocarcinoma.”
Later in 1998, the Maine Medical Center Research Institute declared that cocaine has negative effects on the human body’s major immune competent cells, T and B lymphocytes, natural killer cells (NKC), and macrophages. Likewise, researchers from both the University of Tennessee and the University of Illinois reported that the narcotic severely impaired the immune system.
As medical science has proven, it is safe to say that there is a correlation between cocaine and cancer. Hopefully recovering drug addicts will learn from Rob Ford’s dreadful mistakes.
