Personal Ambition, Tobacco Prevention in Arkansas

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  I started trying to find out WTF was going on within Arkansas Department of Health TPCP issues.  Long time advocates were being edged out.  Given the revolving door for ADH employees and community grantees the institutional memory of tobacco prevention was being put at serious risk.

Snot the first time.  

Years ago functionaries within the Arkansas Cancer Society and the Arkansas Heart Association did their royal best to wrest ADH funding from the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas.  I recall former CTFA Chair, Dr.Caesar Compadre, laughingly talk about his first issue w CTFA was a motion to dissolve the coalition. Fortunately this bizarre coup was thwarted.

Unfortunately, the pettiness of some individuals involved, at w least tobacco, still seems the take away. Recently the bureaucracy within ADH has gone out of their way to alienate and de-fund the two statewide coalitions, the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas and the Youth Extinguishing Smoking Teams.  Both CTFA and the fiduciary for YES teams have declined to re-apply for restrictive and micro managed grant opportunities. Couple this w an ADH request for proposals for a statewide coalition that both CTFA and the YES people have been encouraged to ignore and one can see a very focused attack on the two most effective coalitions, and individuals, in the state.

A sincere tobacco free advocate has to ask, “Why?”

In 2003 the very first real lesson tobacco free advocates in Arkansas learned was that there must be a distinct separation between the tobacco free lobbyist and the tobacco free advocate.  At one level this is a matter of simple semantics. At another it is bureaucratic and ineffectual neurosis.

There is bullshit going on within the Arkansas Department of Health and those ostensibly working as public health advocates that truly stinks of pettiness, ambition, and personal gratification. Unfortunately, this comes at an inopportune time for  tobacco free advocates. We should not be fighting among ourselves now. We should be educating policy makers up and down a legislature dominated by right wing de-regulation anti public health zealots.

Funny how long time tobacco (free) lobbyists do so little of that.

I am always open for queries and conversation.

Project Prevent, My Reason to Write

How many years has the Arkansas Department of Health spent toiling away to find easy to swallow cessation and youth education campaigns?  Neither of which will have the impact that evidence based efforts to de-normalize tobacco use have.  And most recently the Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program has announced the latest winners for their Project Prevent essay contest. Well, let loose the under inflated balloons. 

Of all the winners of all the age groups none mentioned the tobacco industry.  Only one made reference to the manufacturers of cigarettes boosting nicotine.  A short look at the web page clearly indicates that marketing strategies targeting youth were clearly emphasized.  Well, where was that emphasis rewarded by recognition and awards?

The kids that wrote these essays aren’t gonna be smokers.  They can spell and their syntax is fairly cogent. They pay attention in class.  The young people who are at risk are on the scholastic periphery and an essay contest is maybe one of the most ineffective means of affecting their behavior. The sorts of things that are evidence based to reduce youth initiation are policy changes that challenge the tobacco industry; policies that denormalize tobacco use, taxes, tobacco free space, marketing reform. And here’s the rub. Unless you recruit young people to advocate for these policies their involvement is wasted.  Every science class they’ve taken tells them that tobacco is gonna kill them. But until they are savvied to the fact that someone is playing them for a mark, efforts miss the mark. And unless they become politically involved in policy change they are also misled and disenfranchised in any effort at reducing tobacco prevalence. 

So what we have here with Project Prevent is an activity that not only does not prevent tobacco use it wastes the effort of those youth who might well be engaged in evidence based effective prevention. Local grantees get to say, Woo Hoo! We got the local kid in the paper.  ADH gets to say, Look, a kid in the paper!  But at no point does anyone get to say that this is making a difference in itself.  Good press is good press, but unless there is advocacy for underlying policy change you’re just spending the money. And for far too long TPCP and too many grantees have hoisted a Mission Accomplished banner when the money gets spent. 

Sincere tobacco free advocates need to demand that Settlement funds be spent efficiently to reduce prevalence.  Easy tripe like youth essays have limited value in this endeavor.