I’m very touched by this gift I was unexpectedly sent for speaking at the 2026 Asian American Cancer & Diabetes Symposium earlier this year at City of Hope. I don’t know how the wonderful organizer knew my style, but this certainly fits in with my decor! What’s more is that this lights up with various lighting patterns as you can see in this little video Shea took!
As if it wasn’t bad enough that the bias is skewed only to retailers going “broke” rather than what’s best for their patrons, now we have this.
Open letter to “journalist” Olivia Peluso who mentions me as a key element of her recent article on Smoke-free Bar Patio Article full of inaccuracies about me in San Francisco Gazetter: Your article about the June 8 further continuance of the Smokefree Bar Patio ordinance with the Land Use Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors mentions me and is full of inaccuracies that I hope you will correct on the record. There’s no reason for this kind of journalistic sloppiness and absurd assumptions, particularly about my career and motivation for poison-free air for everybody who desires it.
• I was NOT in attendance on June 8. I was at the previous May hearing of the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee.
• I was one of the last people to speak and was there until all public comment was done, so there was no leaving in the middle of anything. My public comments are available online with the City of San Francisco’s own recording system, and it will show that I was not there on June 8.
• I have NEVER been paid by any anti-tobacco advocacy organization in the 35 years of being involved with these sorts of groups all over the United States. I am 100% a volunteer.
• I had no hand in creating the petition or its language! I am one of about two thousand signatories on the petition you mention. I don’t deserve the credit for this.
I know you go to great lengths to show that people who don’t live in San Francisco have opinions, but may I remind you that we are not only residents of the Bay Area, but our money is just as green. Last I checked, San Francisco really enjoyed tourist money and patronage of its amazing establishments. For years I worked in San Francisco proper, and most of my life I’ve lived in the Bay Area as a second-generation Californian. I suggest you do your homework as a “food and drink reporter” for your periodical. Perhaps the next time you want to divulge personal information about the subjects in your article, you try to reach out to them and interview them directly to make sure you get the story right.
I created this AI graphic that helps illustrate why I’m so in favor of smoke-free bar patios in San Francisco. Hundreds of other California cities have already enacted this ordinance, including Oakland and San Jose, the two other large cities in the Bay Area. Why is SF so far behind when it has been so progressive on worker health and the comfort of tourists who bring untold billions to the city? The few bars whining about how poor they’ll be belies empirical evidence over many decades that patronage only increases when an establishment goes smokefree. More importantly, what about the right to breathe fresh air in a public space without having to disclose one’s medical conditions to justify that right? Do the people of San Francisco not remember health crises that they helped bring to the world’s attention? Tobacco-related illness is the MOST preventable cause of death in the world. How does that casually get dismissed as an opportunity to monetize? Even if businesses had to shave off a little bit of profit, which has never been proven to have happened, I think the health of staff and patrons should always be paramount. I currently choose not to avoid bar patios because I cannot get fresh air from a stuffy bar if I’m forced to inhale poison from any number of people who smoke in these confined spaces, albeit “outdoors” in an urban setting directly beneath apartment windows.
World No Tobacco Day was May 31, so I was happy to participate in LGBTQ Minus Tobacco‘s event in Livermore, where the City Council is contemplating updating its tobacco ordinance to once again be a leader in the Bay Area by setting a good example for its residents. I’m so proud to be volunteering with this group in many counties in the Bay Area, particularly after the amazing progress we were able to make in Vallejo. The goal is for no one to die from tobacco-related illness, so there’s a long way to go, particularly with this backward administration in Washington, DC, allowing itself to be bought at the expense of the health of people who become addicted to this poison.
I had the honor of speaking on a panel for the 2026 Asian American Cancer & Diabetes Symposium at City of Hope. Here is the segment that I participated in. This is a shortened version of the slide deck presentation I gave at the Pride Symposium about a year ago.
I had the privilege of speaking to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee with a great group of people. I wish the misperception of loss of income wasn’t the broken record we heard from retailers that they will get less money if they are “forced” to make their dense urban spaces have no poison in the air from untold number of customers. Decades of smoke-free air laws have proven this empirically to be false. Never mind the lack of consent the other customers are not entitled to with the way things are now. The full video is available for those who wish to see it, but I at least wanted to show my somewhat rushed comments to get as much in under the wire, including my last line, which I’m proud to have stolen from a fellow advocate.
The full video is here:
All the rage over this new gay romance series, Heated Rivalry. It takes place in modern-day Canada, where smoking rates are incredibly low, and it’s about athletes, but they are GAY, so guess what? In the first SECONDS of the series, the first guy you see is smoking a cigarette like his life depends on it. And just in case you think this is “crazy Joe” making shit up, here’s what a cursory search shows about this idiocy that went into this directorial decision:
“In Heated Rivalry smoking is a key motif representing Ilya’s emotional walls, stress, and toxic coping mechanism regarding his complex relationship with Shane Hollander. Ilya often smokes when stressed by his father’s illness or Shane’s actions. Cigarette smoke symbolizes Ilya’s emotional barriers. Smoking is linked to Ilya’s feelings of insecurity regarding Shane. He has tried to quit because of Shane’s preferences, but returns to it, particularly when he feels neglected or that Shane has moved on.” STOP NORMALIZING THIS.
Today, my dad would have been 86. His birthday sometimes falls on Thanksgiving. He died at 50 due to tobacco-related illness, which decreased his quality of life for years before death, and certainly his health. Statistically, I keep telling everyone he could have still been alive and well at this age, but for Camel’s cigarettes that he was handed as a kid for free outside of a package while growing up in Oahu. The addiction was encouraged in society, and certainly when he himself joined the military. After his quintuple bypass at age 48, it only took him one month to beg my mom to buy him cigarettes that he was too weak to go to the store to purchase for himself. She later told me that she regretfully acquiesced because he was incessant. In my tobacco activism, I really grit my teeth when tobacco retailers (poison-pushing peddlers) complain that if we limit the amount of addictive product that they sell to their community, we are “hurting their retirement.” WHAT ABOUT MY DAD’S RETIREMENT? Do you think dying at 50 is what he planned for, and his mother before him, who died at the same age from her own smoking? I’m not talking about people who died in the 19th century here. This is in the latter half of the 20th century! To say nothing of my cousin Ivan Benenati, who died THIS millennium from osteosarcoma from his smoking when he was only 35!!! EIGHT MILLION people die from tobacco-related illness every year. It is THE MOST PREVENTABLE cause of death, and yet it’s still okay to have product placement in nearly every movie, no matter what the mise-en-scene — EVEN SCIENCE FICTION! How does this continue to be normalized!?!
I had the honor of being asked to give the opening and closing speeches at this event in Fairfield.
This is the extract of my speeches:
This is the entire event’s recording:
As volunteer Co-Chair of Tobacco Free Solano I was glad to be able to attend the hybrid meeting in person, although I regretted that it was the same night as National Night Out and didn’t make it to that in Vallejo. I did speak a few times from the podium and I’ll be back to do the opening speech in November at another meeting. I’m glad to see that our accomplishments in Vallejo and previously Benicia are spreading to the rest of the county!
