A new anti-tobacco campaign that targets the GLBT community will begin appearing in the pages of GLBT newspapers, including the Gay and Lesbian Times, this week. It is part of a major battle being waged by the state and the American Lung Association to reduce smoking in the GLBT community.

“While California has made great strides in reducing smoking rates for adults and youth, recent data shows that the state’s gay and lesbian community smokes at shockingly high rates,” David Souleles, the Chief Deputy Director of the department of health services said at a press conference in Sacramento recently. “According to a 2001 survey, the smoking rate among 18-65-year-old lesbians and gays was 30.8 percent, which is 70 percent higher than the rest of the population in the same age group.”

The campaign is expected to cost about $300,000 and is designed to target the GLBT community with messages that they hope will strike a chord.

“Ours is a community that has experience with fighting for our rights and our lives,” Daniel Zingale, Cabinet Secretary for Gray Davis, said. “We used that to draw attention to the fact that this is a life or death battle as well, and that when we are being targeted for tobacco use it poses the same kind of threat that we face from other things like AIDS, where we have fought back.”

The first two ads in the series, which beginS its run this week, include one with a vending machine, comparing putting money into it to donating to a charity that is trying to spread illness, addiction and death. The second ad in the campaign includes protestors holding signs with messages along the lines of, “I didn’t survive AIDS and gay bashing to get cancer.”

Talking about the need for the campaign, Assemblymember Chris Kehoe said, “Clearly the health issues that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community have battled in modern times — AIDS, alcohol and drug addiction and other intense campaigns for education and prevention — have overlooked tobacco addiction and use.”

Locally, the San Diego chapter of the American Lung Association is joining in the fight against tobacco with their “Our Pride Is Not For Sale” campaign.

“One of our areas of emphasis is to work with the Pride festival and encourage the organizations to adopt policies to reject tobacco sponsorship money because we know that the gay and lesbian community is targeted by big tobacco,” said Debra Kelley, Vice President of Government Relations with the San Diego chapter of the American Lung Association. “We don’t know which organizations receive money and which don’t, but we’re trying to educate the community about the role that sponsorship plays in seducing communities to take money and then silence these same communities about what big tobacco is doing.”

The American Lung Association will also have a booth at the Pride Festival and will be distributing literature about tobacco use and quitting that are tailored to the gay and lesbian community.

According to Suanne Pauley of San Diego Pride, there are apparently no cigarette companies sponsoring Pride this year, but she also admits that tobacco money “is intertwined in just about everything” so there is the possibility that it could crop up.