Low Income People and People of Color Must Stand Up to Big Tobacco
Cigarettes kill. That’s a fact. Not only does cigarette smoking heavily affect users’ health, but it also affects non-users’ as exposure to secondhand smoke can lead to serious health complications.
Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans each year, with more than 41,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke. In addition, smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $300 billion a year…
Cigarette smoking is a problem that deteriorates the collective health of the public.
Here’s the good news: Awareness of the negative health impacts of cigarette smoking has tremendously increased in the United States. And with it came a decrease in cigarette consumption and cigarette-caused illnesses in the past few decades.
But, here comes the bad news: This narrative of public health success excludes a group that is not as successful as their counterparts in saying goodbye to cigarette smoking: low-income people. Smoking among high-income families decreased by 62 percent from 1965 to 1999, while smoking among low-income families only decreased by 9 percent.
On top of that, we know that race and socioeconomic status are closely tied to each other, with large percentages of people of color especially Black and Latino communities living in poverty.
As we rejoice in the strides we’ve made as a country in reducing cigarette smoking, some communities are still left behind.
Big Tobacco’s business strategy is to market its cheap products to low-income communities, certain that they will consume again due to cigarette’s addictive nature.
They profit off of low-income people’s vulnerability to staying addicted. They know that low-income people lack the resources to health-care and thus assistance to cessation. They know that the inability to receive healthcare from illnesses caused by cigarettes adds to the stress of poverty, feeding low-income people’s need to smoke even more cigarettes. The supply and demand for cigarettes are all a part of a cyclical game played by tobacco companies that capture low-income people’s minds and bodies for the companies’ profit.
In addition, because income and race are strong indicators of where people live, the vulnerability from poor health caused by cigarette smoking isn’t just based on how much you make, but also where you live and the color of your skin.
Everyone deserves good health and financial stability regardless of how much they make or the color of their skin. Tobacco companies must be stopped in profiting off of the certain communities’ disadvantaged conditions. I believe that with our knowledge and resilience, we can win against Big Tobacco. And that strong belief largely comes from the people that came before us — our ancestors that fought for us.
For me, that belief started from my grandfather.
My grandfather was an army veteran, a community leader and a father loved by his town and his family. Besides some old photos, I only have two very clear memories of him: one with him carrying me as a toddler on his shoulders, and one with him in bed on life support as he fought cancer — two contrasting memories that showed both his light and darkness. Before he died, I remember him asking me to promise not to make the same mistake he did, to not smoke cigarettes and not increase my likelihood of getting cancer. “Huwag,” he said, “Don’t you ever.”
Since then, I became a firm advocate against cigarette smoking. But it’s not just my personal story above that drives my values; it’s also my belief that good health is essential to empowerment, that all communities deserve to be healthy so they can live good lives especially those often taken advantage of by corporations such as tobacco companies.
We can stand up to Big Tobacco and fight this cycle that has long enough exploited our communities. Fighting cigarette smoking is fighting classism and racism. Every dollar tobacco companies get is a dollar used to continue this vicious cycle. We must reduce cigarette smoking even more than ever. This election, California has the opportunity to change the game, to reduce cigarette smoking through policy by voting Yes on Proposition 56. Proposition 56 increases the cigarette tax in California — it is proven that the less cigarettes are cost-accessible, the less cigarette consumption is. Proposition 56 will also bring in money to our communities to promote good community health and education.
Low-income communities have been taken advantage of for too long and it’s time that our communities fight back. Let’s save lives, let’s save our communities.
Conrad Contreras is a Bay Area resident and an advocate for sociopolitical racial equity, shaping policy and public opinion through digital media. He is the Communications Manager at The Greenlining Institute. Follow Conrad on Twitter.
