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.
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