Photos are courtesy of Action on Smoking and Health and Dr. Geoffrey T. Fong.

Guess who is front and center in this picture?!?!?

In the first block of pictures below I’m commenting on the enforcement of tobacco control ordinances and how we must ensure that accountability is included in the ordinance when it is passed. I also mentioned that we should not send police officers into tobacco retail establishments “guns-a-blazing” whenever we have options, as we do, to use code enforcement resources that municipalities and counties have, or even civilian volunteers/non-profits that are willing to protect our youth from the poison that is sold legally and without regularly to addict our populations and manifesting the most preventable cause of death.

You can see me in a bunch of these pictures fully engaged and in some cases almost on the verge of tears.

Trying to enjoy yet another sci-fi series (3 Body Problem) and there is CONSTANT smoking in the 2024 scenes. How many tobacco executives produced this? It’s disgusting, distracting, unrealistic and of course like in the Avatar movie, these are PhD’s smoking? What does that tell us? There’s nothing redeemable or necessary about these characters smoking of course. It’s all product placement. Tobacco truthteller organizations have noticed a huge uptick in smoking in movies and shows. It’s intentionally put in there as it always has been by one industry trying to sell poison. We need to make this outrage public. It was very easy to find an article on this: https://mashable.com/article/3-body-problem-smoking

There was a short Smoking Ordinance Workshop for Retailer “education.” It was presented by City Attorney’s Office of the City of Vallejo on the forthcoming Tobacco Retail License (“TRL”).

It’s important to me to document the activism being done in fighting for tobacco control in my city. This is a video and presentation intended for tobacco retailers in Vallejo about the forthcoming TRL our coalition has been fighting for. For the record no tobacco retailers showed up (there are well over 100 in our city of 125,000. There were two callers on Zoom, but I believe they were both members of our coalition.

At the end of this presentation, you will hear me ask a question about the criminal enforcement portion of this proposed TRL. For the record, I object to the criminalization of clerks in these situations and intend to make that point to City Council when this is first read, among other things where I feel the TRL falls short. I also feel strongly that the city MUST mandate at least one yearly check for all tobacco retailers for this ordinance to have any teeth, regardless of their possibly having to get creative to hire a non-profit organization or someone to assist with it if the staffing is inadequate in certain years. Furthermore, I believe a yearly report of what was and what was not done must be presented publicly to City Council so that there is accountability regardless of where this ordinance goes.

Here is the slide deck:

We had a hybrid meeting in Fairfield, California the day I moved into my rental (so I was exhausted), but this was important for me to attend in person. My introduction of the keynote speakers starts at 00:21:45. I was happy to have a hand in suggesting that we do this as a “End Game” theme. The awards are given at 2:29:00.

These are the lovely awards I got:

Other pictures from the event:

This e-card from fellow tobacco control activists really blew me away with its sweetness. It’s certainly nice to get such warm kudos for something one loves doing in otherwise dark times in one’s life. I’m so lucky to have found these volunteering opportunities here in the Bay Area and Solano County given that fighting Big Tobacco has been a passion of mine for decades.

I went to high school there across the street from City Hall. It was this connection with this area of the East Bay that really inspired me to attend and advocate for a strong TRL in what is my old stomping ground.

I’m returning to my old stomping grounds on Tuesday, December 12, to speak about a timely Tobacco Retail License update for that city. My alma mater, James Logan High School is there (the only high school in town still), so many formidable years of my life were shaped by Union City, where I also lived.

Cumulatively I also lived in the adjacent cities of Hayward and Fremont for decades. The goal is to thwart Big Tobacco from continuing to sell poison to youth illegally.

Even if one child is spared the addiction of nicotine addiction for his or her life, this journey to the East Bay will be worthwhile.

Unless one’s looking for it, one cannot imagine what branding is being used to market to kids, becoming environmental waste clogging our waterways, manufactured with cheap metals, plastics, battery acid, and other toxic, carcinogenic, leaking substances, including containers that will take thousands of years to decompose. Even if one child is spared the addiction of nicotine addiction for his or her life, this journey to the East Bay will be worthwhile.

After the excellent presentation from youth activists, I joined a subsequent panel discussion, which included:

• A few of the high school students
• Benicia school principals, administrators
• Trustees of the Benicia Unified School District
• Representatives from Solano County of Education (SCOE)
• Tobacco Free Solano (TFS) colleagues with Vibesolano/Solano County Department of Health

We addressed some successes and some warnings of the future with vaping among youth, particularly in Solano County.