Money for anti-tobacco activities is needed more than ever, especially in the gay community where LGBT people smoke at twice the rate of straight people. The money needs to go to anti-tobacco advertising, prevention and cessation efforts and research. Millions of dollars, however, are being diverted to fund the fight against obesity. With Michelle Obama championing the cause, obesity is being increasingly identified as a national problem. The rate of obesity has doubled since 1985 and fully one out of three Americans is obese. Tobacco still demands adequate funding - four times as many people die from tobacco related illnesses than people die from obesity related illnesses. One out of five people are smokers in the country. Read about the issue in yesterday's New York Times article - Tobacco Funds Shrink as Obesity Fight Intensifies (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/health/policy/28obesity.html)
The preference for obesity fighting over anti-tobacco efforts exists in charities and federal and state governments. The White House got more funding to fight obesity than tobacco in the economic stimulus and health care reform legislation. States have diverted $150 million from anti-tobacco programs in the last two years and regularly divert tobacco settlement money to general expenses. Added cigarette tax revenue also gets sucked back into the general funds pool. Meanwhile, funding for tobacco PSAs is languishing. The "Truth" ads are falling by the wayside for lack of funding, falling to $35 million last year from $104 million in 2000.
This whittling of support can only invigorate the tobacco companies. “The industry outspends us in a day what we spend in a year,” said David Dobbins, chief operating officer of "Truth" producers the American Legacy Foundation.
The state of tobacco funding should be a wake-up call. Tobacco activists have a heavily funded, well-defined adversary in the tobacco industry that looks for any chinks in our armor to reach out and weaken us. Instead of pitting obesity against smoking, the government should be promoting each fight according to need. The nation needs the commitment.
Stay in Touch!
Keep track of the work Butt Out is doing by going to our website (www.butt-out.org/), friending us on Facebook (butt-outsanfrancisco) or by connecting with us on Twitter (twitter.com/buttoutsf).Butt Out is a project of Breathe California, funded by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, which works to get tobacco money out of LGBT community organizations in San Francisco. We also educate the public about the hazards of smoking and about smoking cessation.
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