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!
Here we go again. EBAR features a lesbian artist and just had to normalize smoking and tobacco usage/addiction, which affects the LGBTQ population at much higher rates due to our community being targeted by commercial tobacco poison pushers. For shame EBAR! It’s bad enough EBAR takes tobacco advertising that sometimes attempts to make it look like it’s an objective article. Last year I penned a response to them doing that, but the targeting of our community is still happening, and people need to speak up. Why the FUCK did this woman need to have a cigar in her hand? Does that imply “success”?!? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
I was invited to attend an in-person Contra Costa County Health meeting, which was only a short distance over the bridge from my home. I spoke about the End Game Summit I attended in Chicago recently. We also celebrated the recent Tobacco Retail License passing in Brentwood, which I spoke to City Council about remotely the day I flew back from Chicago. One of the attendees thanked me specifically for mentioning right after a paid lawyer for the tobacco retailers spoke that I was there as a lawyer who was NOT being paid. With LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, we have a coalition also making strides in Pleasant Hill, where I worked for six years.
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.
NEEDED DIVESTMENT – I covered my concern over “diversified” mutual funds that many of our retirement savings go into funds that are NOT green and therefore contribute to tobacco companies. WE MUST DIVEST.
RACISM & HOMOPHOBIA – I spoke about Big Tobacco’s targeting of numerous marginalized communities, various ethnicities and of course the LGBTQ population.
ENTERTAINMENT – I literally said, “it chaps my ass” that imagery in the entertainment industry STILL normalizes smoking and gives them free advertising, when electronic advertising of tobacco was made illegal decades ago. These depictions, I gave examples of, are even in the sci-fi genre which depict in the distant future and especially among protagonists for no substantive reason on film. I would like to see some outreach to producers and directors to curtail this dangerous trend.
DOGE REPERCUSSIONS – I pointed out that our HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. is a known Zyn (smokeless tobacco pouch that still causes cancer) user and popped one in his mouth ON CAMERA during a congressional hearing! With an administration rewriting history, we need to focus on why this product was drastically changed from traditional sacred tobacco use among indigenous Americans to the deadly poison it is sold as now.
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.”
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.
After working remotely for more than four years, I finally had a good excuse to fly down and see our gorgeous campus in Duarte, California. I had sometimes waved to the building from the freeway when driving by on my way to vacation in Palm Springs, but on this day I had the privilege of speaking about my pro bono tobacco activism at the Pride Health Symposium!
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!
