This first picture is of a cool tumbler I received from the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) gala in Chicago, where I attended the Second Annual Tobacco End Game Summit last week. I opened the package when I was in Chicago and thought, “How cool that they gave us these mugs to thank us for our advocacy.” But EVEN COOLER was when I looked again and read the BACK of the mug!!!! Now I take this thing with me EVERYWHERE! I love it when advocates OWN IT.
After flying back from Chicago earlier in the day for a Tobacco End Game Summit, I mustered the energy to go online and fight for a robust Tobacco Retail License with my fellow activists for the health of youth who would otherwise become addicted to tobacco. The vitriol from retailers who insisted that they would go belly up if they had to have their sales of POISON curtailed was unbelievable, even using a 9-year-old boy whose parents told him they might lose their house if the TRL passed, rather than find HEALTHY products to sell in their community. I told the City Council about my ties to Brentwood since the 1970s and how my own godfather, a long-time resident of Brentwood on Oak Street, died prematurely from his own smoking. I spoke immediately after a PAID lawyer and got to mention that I was there PRO BONO. You can hear my comments in this video. I’m so pleased that the City Council did not kowtow to the paid attorney and the big businesses and put the health of the community first.
This first video is the excerpt of my comments:
I got most of my prepared comments out before getting cut off by the 2 minute timer:
Good evening City Council. My name is Joseph Hayden. I’m a volunteer co-Chair of Tobacco Free Solano. With my law degree I work pro bono with many counties in the bay area including Coco. Unlike the person who just spoke, I am NOT getting paid to be here. Brentwood is special to me as I’ve had longstanding ties there since the 1970s. My godparents moved to Oak Street with my godbrothers and were very active in the community and in the high schools long before the major growth that took place. Sadly that same godfather died way too young due to his tobacco addiction, leaving my godmother a young widow. In my immediate family numerous others died between the ages of 35 and 50 from their own addiction to tobacco. I’m pleased that Brentwood is considering a relatively robust Tobacco Retail License so that the youth have a better chance to live their best lives without the scourge of addiction since more than 95% of people who smoke started before they were of legal age. I wish all retailers would wake up and stop peddling POISON altogether by voluntarily removing this garbage from their shelves and selling healthy products. The future is a world where commercial tobacco is no longer widely available and certainly not normalized as it has been. Profit versus health? Not a question for me. Tobacco related disease is THE MOST preventable cause of death in the world. 8 million people a year are killed by this shameful industry. For centuries commercial manipulation turn sacred traditional tobacco of indigenous people to this highly toxic combination of carcinogenic chemicals that are designed to kill when used as intended. As for distance complaints by the retailers, it was already reduced dramatically. I’m sure if they had their way there would be no density requirement at all. This distance does not comport at all with the best practices of a TRL from the Public Health Law Center. We just heard from families affected by pediatric cancer. Thank you for taking this step to put your community’s health above profit.
Here is the entire segment (with extra parts at the beginning and end):
Video to come and pictures of me on a panel to come (hopefully).
I had the honor of being invited back to the Second Annual End Game Summit in Chicago. The previous one in 2024 was in Washington DC.
I addressed a number of issues from the dais and in various comments.
As a reminder, I pay for my own travel and accommodations to these things and all my work is pro bono. This is what my blood, sweat and tears to get my Juris Doctor was for. This is what I wanted it to be for.
The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council put on an amazing gala in the evening after the day-long End Game Summit. I was lucky enough to be invited to the gala as well. There were amazing spoken word contest winners and other performances, as well as a preview to an upcoming film made by Black and indigenous activists against commercial tobacco and reviewing the history of sacred traditional tobacco, which has NOTHING to do with the garbage products that colonizers made out of this native North American plant.
I love collaborating with these amazing people, saving so many lives, and fighting for the end to ALL MENTHOL sales nationwide, like California has finally done. Of course END GAME means ending all commercial tobacco sales as has been done in more and more jurisdictions across the planet.
I stopped by the Vallejo JFK Library’s Joseph Room, where they were hosting a Health Fair. I tabled a bit with Tobacco Free Solano (see my T-shirt), who I’ve volunteered with as a Co-Chair for several years.
The video below is a little video panorama of the Health Fair that the Vallejo JFK Library was hosting in the Joseph Room earlier this week. I made to that Tobacco Free Solano was in attendance since it was only a tiny blurb in the Vallejo Weekly. This was early on as it was getting set up, but a very cool idea and networking opportunity for local agencies and other non-profits.
I would give them a D+. I’m very impressed they did NOT have the cigar event on the schedule this year. Whether it took place unofficially I did not hear.
There was some signage that the resorts and bar used, but I still had to approach at least a dozen people over the week with blatant disregard for the explicit signs that they were sometimes smoking immediately under. Most apologized to me, which I was not expecting.
Here is the pool at the West Sonoma Inn. Three VERY temporary signs (yellow) were there to tell people to only smoke in designated areas, but there were guys smoking on the edge of the pool all week. Some of them told me that they were told that smoking in the FIELDS was okay, so I had to point them to the one designated area, which is under redwood trees and on the premises. I do not believe this location is appropriate, but an accommodation, much like the one at the Triple R in the parking lot. Here is that “designated” area at West Sonoma Inn:
At the bonfires it was EVERYWHERE and while some of the guys tried to stay off the most crowded areas off the sides, but these assholes were smoking combustible commercial cigarettes at Ground Zero. Unbelievable. I guess next year I need to take far more footage and pictures to document better, but I was TRYING to enjoy my vacation.
The Woods, which had the most explicit signs that said “this entire property is smokefree,” had people smoking AT the pool right under the signs (until I confronted them), some of them went off to secret area between fences until I confronted them. One of them told me “it’s just a vape.” What is this? 2017? People actually staying at the resort were also observed by me (Room 4) to be smoking openly right in front of their doors. I guess it was repugnant for them to smoke in their own rooms against policy, but they wanted to share their passive smoke with every passerby.
Many of my friends were unfortunately some of these vapers. I told them the rules generally, but I did not want to be the constant bringer of bad news either.
One of the ironies is that a former heavy smoker friend of mine who now smokes a vape with zero milligrams of tobacco, miraculously, was at this booth. Notice that it raises money for Sonoma Health? Raising money for (gay men’s) health is, after all, the origin of the non-profit Lazy Bear Fund. I also feel that it should not be the responsibility of volunteers and board members to enforce the law in a town that obviously violates it 365 days a year. The onus should be on the resort and bar owners.
I did ask my friends who volunteered and I was assured that they had a STERN lecture to have people only smoke in designated areas, but no one was deputized to actually ask. I was in a long line to get into the Woods and I heard my volunteer friend ask everyone to not bring any glass into the pool area. I asked if he was reminding people that there is no smoking on the property at all and he sort of dismissed me that there were signs. I asked if they were reminding people to respect the signs and another friend of mine in line behind me said he would “rather breathe second hand smoke than step on glass in the pool.”
“Well guess what?” I said, “We can have both!”
Happy retirement to two amazing tobacco activists — Ted and Brian — married to each other and wisely retiring on the same day! Congratulations also to Amaya for her taking over LGBTQ Minus Tobacco. I know you’ll do more amazing work as a leader in tobacco control. I’m so happy to be connected with this community in the Bay Area after volunteering in tobacco control decades ago in New York.
This is the presentation of my life! In it I summarize decades of pro bono activism in tobacco control that I’ve done, but most importantly it exposes so much of what Big Tobacco continues to do to poison humans all over the world. I also concentrate on the strides that have been made locally in the Bay Area in the last several years, but since I started this in the 1990’s it’s always been about fighting the industry worldwide. My presentation is 50 minutes long and that’s after I had to cut it back. I was so honored to speak at the Pride Health Symposium at my employer’s campus for the Board I joined for LGBTQ employees. I gave this in late June for Pride Month, but I work on this issue all year long. It’s highly personal and I’m very proud of it. I can almost not believe I got through it. Thank you to so many for your support!
Here is the official video of the presentation I gave:
I was also recently asked to join the Board of Pride in the City, which is the LGBTQ employee group. My closest fellow co-workers also came from far and wide to support me, which was so heart-warming. I am very lucky to work with such great people and such an important institution fighting the scourges of cancer and diabetes every day!
For the third time, I attended the Jesse Bethel High School’s annual Mental Health Fair with colleagues from LGBTQ Minus Tobacco during lunch. We were well received by the students and staff. We were there with many excellent local programs set on making this city better. The kids seemed eager to learn about the harms of tobacco-related illnesses and cessation services.
I was very frustrated by these bumpers with the amazing Quinta Brunson from a recent Saturday Night Live episode. Then I received an email touting “Black excellence” with this third picture, which reminded me of an opinion letter I wrote back in 1996. I was still a law student and made sure to write articles about the tobacco industry for my law school newspaper regularly, but The National Jurist is a nationwide periodical that still exists today.
I include the picture I complained about on the cover. They published my complaint in a subsequent issue. Nothing has changed in thirty years! While I would have worded it differently, the targeting of the Black community, women, queers and other marginalized community by commercial tobacco is unending.
For anyone who thinks that my efforts to fight Big Tobacco stem from a more recent passion, this should be evidence that I have been consistent about it for decades.
At the JFK Library here in Vallejo, when meeting fellow activists on commercial tobacco control issues, I saw a couple of signs I couldn’t resist taking selfies with. I’ve been to meetings at this room before, but never quite captured the appropriate signage. They must have known I was moving here when they named this years ago.
