This morning a Vallejo college student and now adult former youth activist, Genesis Miguel, appeared on OZCAT radio’s Vallejo Project program here in Vallejo.

The subject matter is the activism that we’re doing to get a Tobacco Retail License (TRL) instituted here in Vallejo, which the City Council unanimously directed city staff to draft robustly for voting on in the coming weeks.

Our coalition successfully got Smoke-Free Multi-Unit Housing passed unanimously last year, but this year we want to further that health equity and protect youth even more from becoming the next generation addicted to nicotine after being targeted by Big Tobacco. Vaping is an epidemic among youth, particularly the ones who are of color and queer, as they smoke at higher rates and have been specifically targeted by Big Tobacco in their advertising. Deceptive highlighter-styled devices and other decoy products are meant to avoid detection as well.

The websites mentioned for our coalition include:

• LGBTQ Minus Tobacco
• Vibe Solano
• Bay Area Community Resources (which includes the YTAPP program Genesis mentions)

Genesis is so right when she says, “Educate yourself on WHO is selling this.”

It’s not some kind of native American tradition to push tobacco in the forms it is now to maximize nicotine addiction.  It’s historically callous, huge corporate capitalists who target new populations around the world, all the while knowing the product’s addictive potential.  Here in the USA when men weren’t enough, they made it acceptable in society for women to smoke.  Believe it or not, it was controversial when the first women smoked on screen (gasp).  When the European descendants weren’t enough to grow profit, they went specifically for people of color, showing how “hip” they were.  When hetero-normative people weren’t enough, they made sure to play upon the queer populations as a purported ally. 

Big Tobacco has to keep changing their names as their true nature is revealed.  Altria literally doesn’t mean anything.  This is deliberate.  The families who made their fortunes on tobacco (Reynolds & Tisch are just two examples) also took their names off of products once there became a stigma and people suffered too much loss, even though they put their names on HOSPITALS and medical school buildings!

The business model is always to maximize profit despite the millions of people the product quite predictably kills very prematurely and usually in the most undignified ways, all the while attempting to avoid pesky rules disallowing them from selling to impressionable, rebellious youth.  Indeed, that is the only way they can keep surviving as an industry, knowing the lack of mortal thoughts that this age group has when they embark on this incorrectly assumed “safer” vaping option.  The medicinal allowance for cannabis in some jurisdictions is probably making it seem like the same vape devices that can be used for tobacco are also harmless.  Learning the corporate origins of these devices and the callousness with which these practically anonymous drug lords (the biggest in the world) are exploiting our youth should be the reason for the passion, provided an individual’s health and that of their family is not enough.  Case in point, attempts to make tobacco companies look like altruists with big tax write-offs in recent history, like the Whitney “museum” of art.  Make sure to play the one-minute audio file on the Whitney link. 

I was reminded recently of how disgusting it is that this “museum” exists when I heard it mentioned casually with the other fantastic museums in New York as must-sees on CNN.  Lots of museums have controversies for pillaging various cultures around the world, but this one existing at all is a complete insult.  I was even invited to events at “the Whitney” when I was in law school in NYC. I let people know why I would never attend those events, nor ever step foot in that building paid for with blood money.  I didn’t care what people thought of me if it helped even one more person realize the truth of its origins.

Now back to Vallejo:

The green room at OZCAT is very cool:

Arriving at OZCAT in downtown Vallejo: