Tobacco Free Activists Recognized by National Group

Handsel Art

19 November 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

contact J.R. Few

handselart@gmail.com

or 870-427-1365

Tobacco industry marketing tactics, like product placement, make nicotine addiction seem normal 

and harmless and are often subtle and deceptive. 

Two Arkansas photographers have been recognized in a national tobacco prevention photography contest hosted by Countertobacco.org.  Ashley Richter, a tobacco free advocate attending North Arkansas College, was a winner in the Youth Appeal category with a photo of  an electronic cigarette advertisement adjacent to candies at a convenience store counter.  An Honorable Mention in the same category was awarded to J.R. Few of rural Marion County for a photo showing product placement of flavored cigars next to bubble gum and hard candies. Photos like these, showing nicotine products and ads in proximities to candies or foodstuffs, display the unfortunate and false subliminal message that they are harmless and normal.

Countertobacco.org is the first comprehensive resource for groups working to challenge tobacco at point of sale. The tobacco industry has a history of sophisticated and successful marketing that, in addition to a federal conviction for fraud in 2006, addicts and kills over 400,000 Americans annually. Currently, the major focus of tobacco industry marketing is the retail environment where tobacco is sold. Not coincidentally, research shows that convenience stores selling tobacco are where youth most frequent.

Few, a volunteer with the Arkansas Cancer Coalition and the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas notes, “Ms. Richter’s photo is topical and important because the industry is taking advantage of a loophole in federal and state regulations for tobacco products to market the electronic cigarette. These devices are not a tool to help people overcome their nicotine addiction. They are a marketing strategy to prevent just that.”  Public health research has shown that rather than helping people quit smoking, electronic cigarettes prompt a dual use of nicotine delivery with no real net health benefit.  

The American Cancer Society holds the annual Great American SmokeOut on the third Thursday of November. The ‘SmokeOut’ is designated as a day nicotine addicts can take a day off and perhaps extend a tobacco free life.  If we pay attention to groups like Countertobacco.org it may also be an opportunity to understand how the tobacco industry continues to market a deadly addictive drug. 

The Arkansas Department of Health offers free counseling for nicotine addiction at 1-800-QUIT NOW.

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A current thought on harm reduction

 Harm reduction was a term coined in response to diseases and maladies encountered by homosexual men and by intravenous drug users in the face of the tremendous onset of the AIDS epidemic in the late 80s.  Clean needles and condoms were seen as a way to offset the worst effects of a public health crisis until an actual cure or remedy for the diseases that were killing people was found. 

Since then the term ‘harm reduction’ has been bastardized by the tobacco industry as not a way to reduce harm until a remedy for tobacco related disease is found but a way to perpetuate tobacco industry profit under the guise of public health.  This is so very evident after we see that the same arguments for the ‘harm reduction’ of spit tobacco are the same used for the novelty of electronic nicotine delivery.  There is disease related to intravenous drug use and some sexual behaviors.  There is disease related to tobacco use.  One use of the term ‘harm reduction’ wants to find a remedy for disease.  The latter uses the term as a means of continuing tobacco industry profit.  The crux is that there may be a human inclination toward intoxication and certain sexual behaviors but that does not necessarily include nicotine.

Focusing public health efforts on safe sex and clean needles responds to modified and alternative behaviors as remedial. Focusing efforts on changing nicotine delivery responds to alternative nicotine delivery as the remedy.  The first is a public health strategy. The latter is a marketing strategy.  As the multinational tobacco corporations ease their way into electronic cigarettes we see more and more of the same arguments for ignoring actual data concerning dual use and disease.  Electronic nicotine provides no significant pubic health benefit.

One must look closely to see the tobacco industry’s subtle diversion of blame and rights with harm reduction. The original use of the term regarding drug use and sexual behavior wants to see individuals change their behavior.  The tobacco industry wants to see harm reduction confuse behavior with a choice of nicotine delivery. 

The tobacco industry is not concerned with rights, but profit.