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.

ADH Insults Tobacco Prevention Advocacy

I’ve had issues w the Arkansas Department of Health for about as long as I’ve known anyone associated. I’ve met some of the most insincere and self serving bureaucrats known to humanity working, ostensibly, toward tobacco prevention. That said, I’ve also known some of the most dedicated and committed individuals you could imagine.  The Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program, with a few notable exceptions, has enjoyed talent and sincere advocacy.  Somehow they seem to move right along to other issues with too much frequency. 

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and in Arkansas.  The tobacco industry is responsible for the leading risk factors for heart disease, stroke, and lung disease. 90% of lung cancer is due to cigarette smoking killing more than the next top three cancer killers combined.  Tobacco kills.  Got that?

This week, I had the unfortunate opportunity to visit the Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program’s offices. I had proposed to the Arkansas Cancer Coalition and was funded for a small grant to do air quality monitoring for a couple of the significant exemptions to Arkansas’ Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006. This was dependent on collaboration w the use of TPCP’s SidePak pm2.5 air monitors and damned if the device, that was actually purchased new for this venture, failed to work properly. Much to my disappointment I had to touch base w Debbie Rushing and lay the repair or replacement of this device on her table.  I have to say that she and Dr. Gary Wheeler have been more than supportive for my proposed activity.  Advocates need this kind of data to rectify our lame assed clean indoor air law.  And Gary and Debbie are both savvy and honest enough to admit it.

Enough about my complaining.  I had to return the SidePak.  This was my heuristic experience.  The last time I’d been to the TPCP offices was to meet Michael Johnson with the Rand Institute upstairs to discuss grantee evaluation about 2004.  The office was bustling with folks upstairs a in corner office space filled with windows.  Brochures and educational materials, were stacked in the hallways. 

On Monday I limped to the top of the exterior stairs to the main ADH security desk to return the SidePak.  The guard had to look up on his computer to discover where the TPCP offices were. “They are in the basement,” he said.  I took the elevator down into a short corridor with janitorial offices.  I could see stacks of paper towels in door windows.  I went back upstairs and a new police guy said I had to go through the double doors marked “No Admittance.”  I went back down and fortunately caught some gentleman to ask how to find the Tobacco Prevention offices and let me through.  He told me to follow him through the double door onto a loading dock and out through another.  He said the Tobacco Prevention office was down the hall and to the left.  I thanked him.  Stumbling down the hallway I found the TPCP sign on a door.  Inside, was a relatively empty roomful of cubicles, no reception.  Making my way to Ms. Rushing’s office I heard what makes her my hero for today speaking to the TSI SidePak people on the phone.  “And so, as a good customer service representative, what are you going to do for me?”  This after the failure of an unused, expensive, device.

Debbie, I apologize for adding to your workload.

My issue is that the Arkansas Department of Health literally has buried the people burdened with challenging the leading cause of death and disease in the basement. 

But wait there’s more!  I left Debbie on the phone with whatever cretin at TSI who may or may not make things right.  They sure won’t make the three days right I sat in smoke filled space at a horse track to get data. The notable thing here is that the Arkansas Department of Health does not really give a shit about the leading cause of death in Arkansas.

I left the TPCP offices and went through the double doors at the loading dock.  A young lady actually held the door for me.  Unfortunately, the doors on the other side, and that side too, were locked.  The door buzzer for assistance on my return went unheeded leaving me locked outside. I was starting to hike around the building when I saw a pair of women pushing a mail cart. She asked me if I was trying to get into the building and told me I was not supposed to be there.  I thanked her and took the elevator to give the young police guy my visitor’s sticker. (He was probably the most sympathetic and helpful individual I met with the exception of Ms. Rushing.)

The whole point of this missive despite my whining was to note that the Arkansas Department of Health and in consort with the Department of Human Services has done their very level best to hide the individuals charged with challenging the leading cause of preventable death in offices behind the janitors, a loading dock, and the mail room, w two doors that lock behind you.  This sucks.

If the state of Arkansas had any sincere ambition to protect the public health the political figureheads would do more than pay lip service to tobacco prevention.  And the actual individuals charged with the actual work would get better treatment than they do now.  I knew that the powers that be had abused and driven away a celebrated thoracic surgeon and one of the leading tobacco prevention advocates on the planet in Dr. Carolyn Dresler.  I did not know how far they had gone to discourage anyone of merit to make any habit of challenging the tobacco industry.  

Just in case anyone in Arkansas had any optimism about the political courage our policy makers have for tobacco prevention you should make more of an effort to thank the TPCP people who continue to work in Little Rock. The folks that run the Department of Health would rather we don't find the tobacco prevention branch.

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The Right Message

Here is the link to the previously mentioned presentation: The Right Message. Why not, Why, and How.  I was encouraged reading in the new 2014 Best Practices for Tobacco Control the emphasis on Mass Reach health Communication.  The tobacco industry is pretty clear in their goal of selling a profitable product.  Public health on the other hand has been divided in its efforts and less than honest about actually saying what it should be doing is making that product unprofitable.  This is one reason I tend to try and recognize tobacco free space as not merely the clean indoor air but also the parking lot free of signage or the counter top free of product.  It is not merely that tobacco is a health risk.  The tobacco industry is a health risk.

Anyway, here is the link to the video again.

TPCP, Using Media, and Lobbying

I’m bad about keeping a blog. Since no one reads it anyway it becomes little more than a journal.  But I need to follow up on an opportunity I was given presenting a short bit to the current Arkansas Department of Health Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program (TPCP) Grantees at their Quarterly meeting at Pulaski Tech recently. The bulk of the day was an Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights training by their Southern States Regional Consultant, Onjewel Smith.  

My presentation was little more than a combination of a perspective of how public health has always been short sighted, when it came to dealing with the tobacco industry from as far back as the Frank Statement, and a synopsis of a paper I delivered at the 2009 ASH Wales Conference in Cardiff, Wales.  The Cardiff presentation was an overview of successes Tobacco Free Marion County had in reducing BRFSS adult smoking rate numbers making use of a coordinated and comprehensive public relations campaign.  CTFA’s Katherine Donald suggested that since my gig came while everyone was eating their boxed lunches I was the Keynote Speaker.  I told her that if I ever got around to writing a C.V. it would be.

Dr. Gary Wheeler, acting medical head of TPCP and an inaugural graduate of the Clinton School of Public Service, I cannot brag on Gary enough, helped clarify my language about a Fayetteville bar owner’s complaint to the state Ethics Board.  Gary shared that calling attention to using public funds to lobby was a tobacco industry ploy  used against federal tobacco free efforts in the 90s.  Regardless, it was Huckabee in 2003 who said he wanted tobacco grantees to comply with the “letter as well as the spirit of the law” regarding tobacco prevention.  I quote this because he used the same language not 3 weeks later complaining about the legislature recessing rather than adjourning. Huckabee’s actions easily checked progress in tobacco prevention in Arkansas to this day, not excluding his 2006 exemption riddled Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Law. It really is an embarrassment that Huckabee has any kind of national stage in the media today much less a political voice.

But it does explain the murmured response among grant administrators and grantees when I assured them that they could lobby within semantics.  Hell, I encouraged them to lobby.  CDC Best Practices are all about policy change.  And my emphasis on semantics was exactly the same advice Lynda Lehing gave grantees in 2003.  There has to be some government employee/ bureaucrat mantra about safety in ignorance. At any rate it was Huckabee’s 2003 call to inaction that was the major prompt for me to speak out and use what I knew about public relations and the media as a voice once removed from Tobacco Free Marion County.  And like Ms. Smith inferred, tobacco prevention advocates often find themselves alone in the wilderness.  TFMC was no exception.  Using the media was a way of making the coalition seem much larger than it actually was.  And it can be for any tobacco prevention advocacy today as well. 

At some point in the near future I’ll put audio to my presentation and put it on line.

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 National Disgrace

I was coincidentally looking through the TTAC newsletter when Katherine Donald shared the link w her Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas mailing list.  What I happened to fall upon in the table of contents was the link to the FDA Tobacco Products page and 8 Tips for talking to youth about tobacco. I get the FDA updates but don’t always follow up.  This is one reason why.

The CDC 2007 Best Practices for  Comprehensive Tobacco Control Health Communications Interventions makes the statement:

“Adolescents and young adults are very sensitive to perceived social norms and media presentations of smoking behavior. Nonsmoking adolescents exposed to tobacco advertising and promotional campaigns are significantly more likely to become young adult smokers. Because adolescents and young adults have been and continue to be so heavily exposed to images of smoking in the media, tobacco advertising, and promotional campaigns, public health counter-marketing campaigns are needed to focus on preventing initiation and promoting cessation.”

Nowhere in the FDA ‘tips’ for talking to youth is there any mention of tobacco advertising, tobacco promotion, marketing, or even the words “tobacco industry.” Instead, it focuses on how the young individual must decide, regardless if they are 11 years old or not, if they will become a nicotine addict.  This is just another example of how and why the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is a national disgrace.

How is it that the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and a wealth of popular public health groups, not including the National African American Tobacco Control Network and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, could support such a terribly flawed bill?

That is a huge question. How, or will, these groups rectify and apologize for their misspent support?  The greater issue is: how will the rest of us redeem a federal law that institutionalizes tobacco unlike never before?

CTFA thanks benefactors

Handsel Art

28 June 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

contact J.R. Few

handselart@marioncounty.com

or 870-427-1365

Tobacco Prevention Advocates Thanked

Local advocates from around the state joined in attending the first annual Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas’ Benefactors Luncheon at the UAMS Fay Boozman College of Public Health June 26.  Styled as an opportunity to thank individuals who aided CTFA’s mission to promote a tobacco free state, the audience was welcomed by Board Chair Carla Sparks and Executive Director Katherine Donald expressing gratitude for services provided in the past and thanks in advance for the future.

Ms. Idonia Trotter (pictured) made her first appearance as  Executive Director of Arkansas’ Minority Health Commission sharing her experiences working with CTFA and the willingness of the Coalition to place a tobacco free mission ahead of taking credit for success.  Ms. Trotter was the first concurrent Clinton School of Public Service  and Bowen School of Law graduate in May.

Local advocate and CTFA partner J.R. Few spoke about the importance of CTFA’s status as the only coalition in the state that specifically challenges the tobacco industry. 

“Other public health groups may, out of necessity, focus on illness caused by tobacco but they have their own agenda, unfortunately often shaped by their national offices. CTFA’s goals are unique to Arkansas,“ he said.

Individuals interested in tobacco prevention in Arkansas can contact CTFA at 501- 687-0345 or visit www.arfreshair.com.

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Post One

By way of welcome, this is an experiment; another autodidactic adventure in posting art, angina, and activism.  I'm not sure I can tell them apart at all.