A friend of mine was disappointed by the excessive promotion of smoking in Sam Smith’s promotional video for his residency at the Castro Theater when it reopens. His online complaints raised some interest and then a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle was also referred to me for comment.
My other comments to my friend about the video were:
Thanks for sharing this unfortunate tobacco advertisement dressed up as a cover from Sam Smith. My comments on the Youtube page pointing out the product placement were immediately removed. I seem to have hit a nerve when I pointed out that Sam Smith would never jeopardize his own voice with the poison of commercial tobacco, but he has no problem depicting all these queers in the Castro harming themselves and normalizing it to help Big Tobacco kill as many of us prematurely as possible. QUEER LIVES ARE NOT CHEAP!