Anti-Tobacco Efforts Lose, Obesity Fight Wins in Government

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.

Hello World!

Cheers everyone! I am cheery today for two reasons. For starters, it is my birthday. At 12:12pm I officially inaugurated my 34th year. I plan to enjoy my special day with family tonight at Chow on Church Street.

The second reason why I am cheery today is because I am starting this blog for Butt Out.

I am committed to Butt Out for deeply personal reasons. Everyone in my family smokes. I grew up in a house hazy with cigarette smoke and had to suffer pent up in cars filled with the noxious fumes. It is bad enough that my parents smoke. Each of my four siblings smoke as well. I dread the thought of losing any of them early to a tobacco related disease. The statistics aren't great. Tobacco kills more people than murder, suicide, traffic accidents, drugs and alcohol combined! What compounds my fear is my frustration in talking to them about tobacco. They won't hear what I have to say. They tell me that I don't have any right to tell them about quitting smoking because I did not smoke myself. They tell me they will quit when they are ready to quit. Hopefully they will quit at the right time.

I became so flabbergasted in dealing with my family that I looked outside for an opportunity to strike out against Big Tobacco. I found Butt Out. Butt Out uses advocates to interact with LGBT community organizations and work with them to adopt anti-tobacco funding policies. By getting organizations to adopt policies, the community is telling the tobacco companies that they cannot buy good will with our good names. They can't pay to look like good guys in our community and to our youth especially. Consider this - fully 43% of our LGBT youth smoke. That is almost half of them! We need to help our youth fight back against the evil influences of Big Tobacco. I feel empowered in my work with Butt Out and look forward to volunteering with them for a long time.

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. This blog will come out every Wednesday. I will talk about the work that Butt Out is doing, about my personal experiences and perspectives on smoking, about interesting things happening in the fight against Big Tobacco and about tobacco and its impact on the LGBT and larger community. Hopefully you will find this blog chock full of passion, insight, up-to-date information and useful knowledge. Maybe you'll even be motivated to join forces with Butt Out! We are always looking for supporters.

I hope you tune into this blog and feel as passionate about fighting tobacco as I do. Watch this page every Wednesday and keep in touch with your comments. Have a great day!

Visit Butt-Out online at http://www.butt-out.org/