The Challenge

The Challenge

Contemporary tobacco use is a historical anomaly. Tobacco leaves pictured on a dollar bill give evidence to its origin as the significant cash crop exploited by European colonialists to populate North America over 300 years ago. What had once been a social and ceremonial herb became the means for capitalist and colonial dominance. By the time cotton was king, tobacco had long since funded the growth of tobacco leaves on a dollar a labor and land intensive plantation economy. This fueled not only the growth of slavery, but the displacement and genocide of aboriginal peoples.

Even today tobacco is the only product legally marketed that, when used as directed, will cause death and disease. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death and also one of the most profitable and influential capitalist efforts in the world.

One hundred years ago, when infectious disease was the leading cause of death, there were no campaigns funded by multi-national industries opposing the public health. Today, tobacco use is the leading cause of death. Today, the tobacco cartel spends millions of dollars a day marketing and lobbying elected officials in an ongoing public relations effort to allow the sale and prevalence of a deadly addictive drug. Even after conviction in a Federal Court for racketeering and fraud, under statutes typically reserved for organized crime, the tobacco industry is still tolerated with virtual impunity.

Effective tobacco prevention seeks to de-normalize tobacco use so that at some point in the future tobacco will never be seen as appropriate or normal and young people will never fall victim to the marketing of a predatory rogue industry. Join us.