How Gay is this? Targeting LGBT Smokers to Quit

The LGBT community has a lot of health disparities, to be sure. And if one were to tick off the top-of-the-mind health concerns facing our community, I bet that HIV/AIDS, drug use, and alcohol would be listed right up top.

But how about smoking? Would that come to mind as a serious health threat to our community? It should. According to the CDC, over 30,000 LGBT Americans die from smoking related illnesses each year – that's more than the number who die from an HIV/AIDS related illness.

With more and more cities/states banning cigarette smoking in public places – like bars and restaurants – groups and public health departments are making pushes across the country to target LGBT smokers to try and get them to quit.

Such is the case in Oregon, where Breathe Free - a project of the Oregon Public Health Department – is running an anti-smoking campaign targeting LGBT smokers. In Oregon, Public Health officials have shown that 1/3 of the LGBT community smokes, while only 1/5 of the overall Oregonian population smokes.

So, the Health Department wants to target gay smokers. One aspect of the campaign is around media literacy: getting younger LGBT people to see and understand that the tobacco companies are targeting the LGBT community in their ads and promotional campaigns. That work includes “How Gay is this Ad?” in which the group takes ads around to where LGBT people are to show them that the ads – which the tobacco industry call “Gay Vague” - are actually very gay specific: showing hot, virile younger men, and showing them smoking.

Combine this with the tobacco companies’ promotional efforts towards gay events and bars and parades and such, and you get a picture of the comprehensive efforts being used by tobacco companies when it comes to the LGBT community.

Will these efforts to get the LGBT community to stop smoking work? Hard to say. But, what is not hard to say is this: smoking is killing LGBT Americans at disproportionate rates, and that has got to change for the better.