Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Remember the story of the three little pigs? The wolf says, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.” Blowing in a house takes a lot of lung power, and the wolf managed to blow down two of three houses. Impressive, and I think I know how he had all that lungpower: He didn’t smoke.
Bet you know where this is going, but don’t let that stop you from continuing reading. A national study done by Monitoring the Future reports 26.7 percent of college students smoke. At the University, which has approximately 30,000 students, that means there are about 8,000 smokers.
That’s a lot of people who probably can’t blow down houses of straw and sticks. But it’s not just those 8,000 students I’m concerned with; it’s the people I identify with, the LGBT community.
I’ve mentioned before that more than 45 percent of females and 35 percent of males in the 18-24 age range who identify with same-sex attraction smoke. LGBT are 40-70 percent more likely to smoke than people not in the LGBT community. That is one of the highest smoking rates of any population.
Need proof? I hate to say it, but go to the Chateau on Wednesday nights. The front porch, i.e. the “smoking porch,” is nearly as crowded as the dance floor. Depending on the song playing, sometimes it’s even more crowded.
Part of this smoking problem comes from LGBT history. Not too long ago, we had zero laws protecting us, making being “out” dangerous. Actually, we had plenty of laws working against us (oh, wait…we still do, but that’s for another column).
So, if we wanted to find someone else who was attracted to the same sex, we needed a way to approach the same sex in a private manner. And what is more private and seductive than the attractive stranger offering you a smoke followed by some small talk and a possible hook up? Classic.
But that’s not the real reason the gay population has such a high smoking rate. Most of us are too young to remember this, but in the early 1990s, R.J. Reynold’s, the maker of Camel cigarettes, launched Project SCUM, a plan to ramp up marketing to consumer subcultures in the San Francisco area.
Anyone who is familiar with LGBT history knows San Francisco is a bastion for the LGBT community: Harvey Milk and the Castro, the Tenderloin area. Copies of the reports for this deplorable project have handwritten notes with “Gay/Castro” and “Tenderloin” written next to consumer subcultures which also included “street people”, people of “international influence”—basically, anyone considered substandard to the ideal, heterosexual American.
Do you know the commercials put on by “TheTruth” where people stand outside tobacco companies and through megaphones or put on demonstrations? TheTruth came into existence when Project SCUM was discovered.
Tragically, Project SCUM succeeded with the “gays.” People distributing free packs of Camel cigarettes can be found at gay clubs and events, The company hires college-age people, often former students, to hand out free packs of cigarettes. What college student turns down free stuff? Ingenius capitalist bastards.
So to my fellow KU students, my fellow gays, I implore you, put down your cigarettes. Instead, save your lungs and help blow down the house that is tobacco companies.
— Bornstein is a senior from Lawrence in women's studies.
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