Category Archives: Activism

Tobacco Retail Licenses, and Why Vallejo Needs One

I have the privilege of presenting with a coalition of organizations at the City Council meeting Tuesday night, April 25, about a very important subject that will make a difference for the future of Vallejo youth if we can get it adopted.  Last year with the same coalition LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, Bay Area Community Resources and VibeSolano, we successfully got a Smokefree Multi-Unit Housing ordinance passed unanimously. 

After Proposition 31 prohibiting the sale of most tobacco flavors in California (including menthol) passed last November, it is important that we give some teeth to the new rules that are designed to protect our youth from access to very addictive nicotine products like cigarettes, cigarillos, vapes, cigars, hookah, etc. It’s shocking how many products every tobacco retailer in Vallejo I visited in January had available.  Most alarming was that some of the delivery devices looked like highlighters and USB drives to help youth hide their tobacco consumption from teachers and parents.  This is by design.

Some of you know that I’ve been volunteering against Big Tobacco since losing my father when he was fifty due to his smoking, not to mention other family members.  I encourage Vallejo residents to speak in favor of a TRL by doing one of the following if you are so inclined.

Here is a fact sheet on TRL’s:

Tobacco Town Hall at Dan Foley Center

Our coalition of Bay Area Community Resources, Tobacco Free Solano, and LGBTQ Minus Tobacco held a town hall with youth activists at which many dignitaries showed up. Vice-Mayor Verder-Aliga, Councilmember Peter Bregenzer, Vallejo School Board Trustee John Fox, and County Supervisor Monica Brown were in attendance.

The youth activists gave us a presentation and, despite the rain, we were in a beautiful venue of the Dan Foley Center at Lake Chabot in Vallejo, with a covered wraparound patio that allowed us to look over the lake, hills, and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

Vallejo School Board Unanimously Approves Tobacco Control Resolution

I’m very proud to advocate for a Vallejo Tobacco Retail License (TRL) with a coalition of activists from LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) and in my capacity as Co-Chair of Tobacco Free Solano (a program of the Solano Department of Health aka Vibe Solano).

We spoke at the VCUSD School Board meeting and they approved the Tobacco control resolution unanimously. Thank you school board member John Fox for agendizing us and allowing us to speak about this important issue. We are also honored with an opportunity to speak at Vallejo City Council on April 11 about the issue for our city.

Adjoa, Nefer, Tino, Tara, Amaya, me and Jimmy.

With the passage of Prop 31 to ban most flavored tobacco products in California, there is a call to action for local jurisdictions to enforce this new edict. Surveys our coalition did in January, weeks after the law went into effect, showed poor compliance among the 25 tobacco retailers in Vallejo. A Vallejo-specific TRL can accomplish this. TRL’s like the one hundreds of California jurisdictions have like Benicia, are revenue NEUTRAL. The funding from the retail license fees pays for gravely needed code enforcement resources, a bolstering which we know Vallejo could use. TRL’s that are written well can:

  1. Mandate minimum pack sizes and prices to deter youth economically from becoming addicted.
  2. Minimize the concentration of large numbers of tobacco retailers in poorer neighborhoods.
  3. Cover the exceptions that Prop 31 made for some flavored tobacco products like hookah, some cigars, etc.
  4. Mandate that pharmacies (which literally exist to sell medicine), stop selling tobacco products; and
  5. Most importantly, enforce the law prohibiting the sale of any tobacco products to minors under 21 years of age, those minors of which Big Tobacco is targeting the most since virtually all new nicotine addicts are underage.

Vallejo youth deserve a chance at living their best lives without the fate of struggling health due to a difficult addiction to break.  Please endorse a Vallejo-specific TRL to make an impact.

Humane Society North Bay Good News

We had a lot of good things going on in February with the Humane Society of the North Bay shelter!

We were given a check from the Vallejo Waterfront Festival as one of the non-profits that benefitted from this two-day event in 2022. Photo courtesy of Vallejo Times Herald.

Volunteers from Cal Maritime Academy here in Vallejo came to volunteer with us, as they regularly do.

My friends and fellow volunteers, Linda Overton and Carlene Coury take two seniors to the wonderful Muttville facility in San Francisco.

Foster Snoopy Arrives

Found wandering around Vallejo with no microchip and no collar, Snoopy came across as a senior with his white whiskers, mangy hair, and a disheveled look. I didn’t really like him at first especially because he would dart out the door and at one point I had to run after him in slippers. He did not know his name. That was before we had him microchipped and neutered, and also before we put an external gate on our front porch.

I named him after a similarly-colored dog that my grandfather had when I was very young. My grandfather was a big fan of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip.

White Card – Community Theater

My friend, neighbor, and fellow Humane Society of the North Bay volunteer, Carlene Coury, directed a staged reading of The White Card, written by Claudia Rankine, at the Pinole Community Theater. In the audience were some activist Vallejoans I was able to introduce her to. After the reading, we got to discuss the multi-layered script with the cast and director. It was quite a moving and timely experience for Black History Month.