Poppers Targeted by Robert F. Kennedy’s FDA

March 18, 2025
HANK ORSO

If you're of a certain age, like yer boy Hank here, you've undoubtedly seen those ubiquitous small brown bottles in guys' hands, taking a sniff on the dance floor, or in the toilets whilst engaged in, well, not dancing. Or they were pulled discretely from a bedside table in the middle of not dancing to give just a bit of a rush to the head or to help relax and open up one's backside so they could not dance a bit harder and longer. I'm talking about poppers, of course, that mainstay of many gay men (and one character from The Sopranos!) and their sex lives. Well apparently, our newly-minted head of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy is having his Food and Drug Administration, a department under his purview, make those brown bottles disappear.

Because it causes AIDS. No, seriously, he believes this.

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If you've tried to order some online recently from your favorite maker, such as Double Scorpio, you may have seen a msg similar to what pops up on their front-facing page:

Double Scorpio has stopped all operations following a search and seizure at our offices by the FDA. We don’t have a lot of information to share but we believe that the FDA has performed similar actions towards other companies recently.

So...yeah. That's a thing that's happening. An update on their page says they are still selling off merchandise "to help pay our legal fees" but of course, it's their clothing, pins, and lube. No poppers.

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As reported by Fast Company, the FDA is cracking down on their production, and "this week, many major poppers brands began wiping their websites and social media presences."

RFK has long had the LGBTQ+ community in his crosshairs, spreading conspiracy theories not just about vaccines but that, for instance, chemicals in drinking water affect children's sexualities, and poppers cause AIDS.

In his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy cited Peter Duesberg, a leader in AIDS denialism. Duesberg theorized that “heavy recreational drug use” caused immune deficiency in gay men, specifically linking the spread of AIDS to the usage of poppers. (quoted from Fast Company)

For his own AIDS denialism, here's a video of RFK "explaining" that AIDS is caused by factors of the "gay lifestyle" like popper use and not the virus HIV. Just to be clear, this was debunked long ago. One would think that when in 2008, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that HIV causes AIDS, that alone would have put his popper theory to rest. But no. Kennedy has previously stated that ""the connection between HIV and AIDS was itself the product of a medical conspiracy with former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci at its head."

Edge Media Network explains that poppers, first developed in the late 19th century to treat angina, was a prescription drug from 1937 to 1960. When it became popular recreationally in the late 60's it went back to being prescription-only. The original formula, amyl nitrate, was the prescription variation, but variant formulas like butyl nitrate and isopropyl nitrate got past the legalities and became popular for general use. Bannings in the 1980's were laxly enforced by the FDA; they've always been basically illegal at times but workarounds (reach-arounds?) made them always available.

Fast Company writes that the FDA's official statement is thus: "As a matter of policy, the FDA does not comment on possible criminal investigations." Criminal investigation?!

I'm sure more will be forthcoming on this matter.