LGB Young Adults Smoke at Higher Rates than their Heterosexual Peers - Legacy eNews

In This Issue

June 2013

New Legacy Study on LGB Young Adults and Smoking
truth® Hits the Road for 14th Annual Summer Tour
Lorillard Ordered to Pay $35M in Wrongful Death Case
Celebrity Snoop Dogg Uses Instagram to Promote Tobacco Use
Save the Date for a Warner Series Webcast this July
Legacy Fellows Say Farewell in Washington, D.C.
truth Announces Winner in National Skateboard Design Contest
Young Professionals Building a Legacy in the Nation's Capitol

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LGB Young Adults Smoke at Higher Rates than Their Heterosexual Peers

This June marks Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month and a new study from Legacy highlights smoking patterns of LGB young adults. According to the study, LGB young adults ages 18-34 are smoking at disproportionately high rates compared with their heterosexual counterparts. This is the first national survey measuring current tobacco use among young adults to ask about sexual identity.

"Tobacco use patterns among LGB young adults are vital to understand because the majority of smokers start smoking by age 26," said Jessica Rath, PhD, MPH, CHES, Director of Research at Legacy and lead researcher for the study. "Our study shows that efforts must continue to reach out to the LGB community early to spread messages about tobacco's deadly toll, so that everyone can be informed about the benefits of quitting smoking or never starting."

Using data from the first wave of the Legacy's Young Adult Cohort Study from 2011, the study confirms higher rates of current tobacco use for homosexual young adults (35 percent) and bisexual young adults (31 percent), compared with heterosexual young adults (22 percent) in a nationally representative sample.

The study highlights the need for surveillance on sexual orientation in national health surveys to improve the available information on disparities among sexual minorities and identify possible interventions to address these gaps. Read more about the new study online.

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truth Hits the Road for 14th Annual Summer Tour

tour2013 The iconic big orange "truth" truck embarked on its 14th annual nationwide summer tour on Saturday, June 15th in Seattle, WA. Through the summer and fall, the campaign will visit more than 60 cities and 30 states, where young truth "tour riders" will interact with teens at popular summer music tours, theme parks, sporting events, and art events. The tour will also make some first-ever stops - in Oklahoma City, OK, and Huntington Beach, CA.

This year two crews of truth tour riders will appear at several events, including:

Vans Warped Tour - An annual summer music festival;
Vans US Open of Surfing - The most prestigious pro surf/skate event in North America;
Six Flags - The world's largest regional theme park;
Rockstar Energy Drink UPROAR Festival - Now in its fourth year, a heavy metal music and lifestyle festival;
Vans Presents the Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championships - a major amateur surfing event;
Vans House Parties - a summer series of music shows live from the House of Vans in Brooklyn, NY;
Major League Gaming Spring Championship - The world's largest competitive video game league;
San Diego LGBT Pride Festival - San Diego's famous cultural festival.

For teens that cannot make it to a 2013 tour stop, thetruth.com features a slice of life from the road, including videos, photos from the tour zone and glimpses of life as a tour rider. By going online, teens can enter to win free tickets to the Vans Warped Tour and Rockstar Energy Drink UPROAR Festival stops as well as play games that connect to tobacco-related facts, and get free downloadable posters.

Summer tour activities will also tie into truth's latest advertising campaign - "ugly truth" - engaging users with the campaign and sparking dialogue between truth and anyone affected by the facts. An ugly truth leaderboard is featured in the truth zone where teens can vote daily on what they think is the 'ugliest' truth-related fact. Zone visitors are encouraged to tweet hashtags associated with various "ugly truths."

Read more about the tour here.

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Lorillard Ordered to Pay $35M in Wrongful Death Case

Marie Evans, an African-American and life-long Newport smoker, died in 2002 from cancer caused by her smoking. She had begun smoking when she was only a young child, lured by free menthol-flavored Newport samples given to children near where she lived, at the Orchard Park Housing Project in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

In an important step forward for victims of the past predatory marketing practices of Big Tobacco, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a decision on June 11, 2013 in Evans v. Lorillard -- upholding $35 million in compensatory damages against Lorillard, the makers of mentholated Newport cigarettes. In one of the most notable aspects of the decision, the Court found that Newport cigarettes are "defective" products. However, in a mixed decision it sent other key portions of the case back to the trial court for further proceedings. These included whether Lorillard's negligent design and marketing of the menthol cigarettes contributed to Evans' death along with the jury's groundbreaking award of $81 million in punitive damages in the trial court.

In a statement, Legacy expressed disappointed in these aspects of the decision and expressed hope that the plaintiffs will continue to actively pursue their claims. Research and actual tobacco industry documents confirm that menthol cigarettes are a starter product for youth, and the tobacco industry has a long history of targeting menthols to youth and communities of color. In fact, the overwhelming majority of African-American smokers smoke menthols. The Massachusetts case has important implications nationally for tobacco control, and we will continue to watch developments with interest.

Read Legacy's full statement.

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Celebrity Snoop Dogg Uses Instagram to Promote Tobacco Use

Legacy researchers published a new article highlighting a disturbing trend in how tobacco products, like cigars, are using social media. Snoop Dogg is a successful rapper, record producer, and actor. In 2012, while headlining at Coachella, a three-day music festival in California with more than 85,000 visitors each day, Snoop Dogg announced his title as "Ambassador" of Executive Branch cigars. He continues to promote Executive Branch through his social media accounts, Instagram in particular, where he has more than 1.6 million followers. Many of Snoop Dogg's pictures of the cigars or their logo have received more than 10,000 likes and at least 200 comments. The photos have also likely been re-posted or shared on other social media sites like Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr.

Due to the engaging qualities of social media, Legacy research maintains that messages that are sent out by an admired celebrity who many people specifically choose to "follow" could have a significant impact on tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors of the followers. Cigar use is on the rise among young people and even though Snoop Dogg does appeal to a wide variety of individuals, his pro-tobacco messages may target people who are at a higher risk for long-term tobacco use and tobacco-related illness such as youth, African-Americans, and individuals of a lower socio-economic status.

Cigars are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, a situation which poses an ongoing challenge for public health and public policy leaders. Given its potential influence on tobacco use behavior, it is crucial that celebrity promotion of tobacco products through social media and other outlets is monitored and reduced in order to counter pro-tobacco messages and lower tobacco use in our society.

The paper "The cigar ambassador: how Snoop Dogg uses Instagram to promote tobacco use," was published in the June edition of Tobacco Control. Read the full article online.

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Save the Date for a Warner Series Webcast this July: The Passion and Power of Youth Activism in Tobacco Control

More than 80 percent of current smokers start smoking by age 18, making the tobacco epidemic a youth epidemic. The first Surgeon General's report on smoking nearly 50 years ago set the foundation for the tobacco control movement, which continues to evolve. For more than a decade, young leaders around the country have emerged to tackle the tobacco epidemic head on in order to prevent even more youth from ever starting.

Join Legacy and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for a dynamic youth-led discussion via webcast addressing the significance of the youth activism movement in tobacco control, how it has evolved and the future of this effort for years to come.

Wednesday July 24, 2013
12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. EST

via Webcast only

For more information and to watch the webcast, visit http://www.legacyforhealth.org/what-we-do/warner-series. A complete list of panelists will be posted.

No call-in or password required to watch the live webcasted event on July 24.

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Fellowship and Farewells for Legacy's Youth Activists

Legacy's Youth Activism Fellowship participants convened in Washington, DC this month for their fifth and last cohort meeting. This gathering engaged Fellows in a process to reflect on the impact of their tobacco control efforts during the program and on their individual growth as tobacco control activists. They have worked diligently on refining and executing local projects to increase awareness of the tobacco epidemic in their respective communities, ranging from smoking in cars with children, to college and university tobacco-free policies and cessation efforts with the LGTBQ college community among other topics.

Legacy Fellows visited Capitol Hill to educate their elected representatives about the Fellowship and to share the stories about their projects and interests in tobacco control. Fellows were able to meet with Representative Joe Heck of Nevada, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

The Fellows now join the members of the growing group of Youth Activism Program (YAP) Alumni, helping to refine the YAP structure and mentor incoming activists in the coming years. Recruitment for the 2014-2015 class of the Youth Activism Fellowship will begin in the fall of this year.

For more information, click here.

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truth Announces Winner in National Skateboard Design Contest

In a creative effort to engage teens in the nation's largest youth smoking prevention campaign, truth partnered with Vans to announce Mountain View High School in Meridian, Idaho as the winning school in a national skateboard deck design contest. Through the Vans' Custom Culture sneaker design competition, high school students from across the U.S. competed for a chance to win a $50,000 grand prize for their school's art program.

This year for the first time, Vans and truth partn

ered to add an additional layer to the Custom Culture contest, where the top 50 finalist schools were given a chance to design a skateboard deck around an actual tobacco--related fact found in Big Tobacco's files: "As early as 1998, execs from one major tobacco company discussed 'covertly' contacting graffiti artists to paint for them in key locations." The three winning Idaho students and their art teacher, Laura Ritzer were honored at a celebration on June 11th at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The winners received a $10,000 check to support arts programs at Mountain View High School.