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Gay marketing expert Bob Witeck (left) and Scout, director of the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network, offered suggestions to directors of state-sponsored smoking quit lines on how to target gay and lesbian smokers. (Photo by Ryan Lee)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: Ryan Lee
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From the pervasive presence of cigarettes in gay bars and some social circles, to gay-targeted ads and promotions that make smoking look sexy and popular, there are many social and marketing forces that contribute to gay men, lesbians and transgender individuals being an estimated 40-70 percent more likely to be addicted to smoking than other groups.
But there is little counter-messaging being done by either mainstream anti-smoking initiatives or gay health groups, experts said during a discussion Wednesday at the annual meeting of the National Network of Tobacco Cessation Quitlines in Atlanta.
“You don’t get the other side of the story,” said Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications, a gay marketing and consulting firm.
Witeck teamed up with Scout, network director for the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network, to coach leaders of state-sponsored smoking quit lines from across the country on how to use a similar brand of targeted marketing to get anti-smoking information to gays.
“We would like to believe that general media [anti-smoking messages] are able to make it across populations,” said Scout, a female-to-male transgender anti-smoking advocate who goes by just one name.
“But we know that there are groups within the broader population that have prevalence rates that are so much higher that something different is working in those groups — LGBT people are one of those populations,” Scout said.
“[Some gay people] feel like an outsider, you don’t feel like part of the club, which means you don’t react to broad messages the same way that other people do,” said Scout, who added that gays themselves should make quitting smoking a higher health priority.
“We need to break ourselves out of the complacency where we do not address it as a health priority within our communities, and by addressing it, I don’t mean telling someone they need to quit,” Scout said. “I think we need to understand that with tobacco, the cumulative toll on our community makes this one of our biggest health issues and we’ve got to stop pretending like it’s just part of us.”
A Witeck-Combs survey from 2003 and 2004 revealed that 34 percent of gay and lesbian adults said they smoked, compared to 24 percent of other adults, while 90 percent said they had never seen an anti-smoking ad that specifically targeted gays.
Leaders of the Georgia Tobacco Quit Line who attended Wednesday’s conference said they are eager to implement gay-specific programs, but political concerns and a shoestring budget make such initiatives unlikely.
“We do have a large [gay] population, we know that, but this is Georgia and it’s so conservative,” said Rhonda Bennett, tobacco cessation specialist with the Georgia quit line. “Right now, our funding is almost nil. There just isn’t the capacity there to work with the different populations in Georgia that we would like to.”
Representatives from several state quit lines said they are reaching out to gay and lesbian smokers that are looking to quit. The New Jersey quit line incorporated a gay chat room into its program that sees about 7,000 unique visitors per month, compared to the quit line receiving between 100-350 calls during the same time.
A small but growing number of state quit lines ask callers about their sexual orientation when collecting demographic information, something Scout said is important so anti-smoking programs know which populations are in greatest need of resources.
“If you aren’t [asking callers their sexual orientation], then you’re part of the ‘let’s not get any of the information so we can make many of the breakouts or figure out how much we’re impacting things,’” Scout told the quit line leaders. “We need to ask that question more because we really need that data.”
Quit lines in Midwestern and Southwest states have included questions about sexual orientation in their demographic surveys with little drop-off or negative reaction among callers, Scout said. But Bennett doesn’t have the same faith in introducing the question to Georgia’s quit line.
“If you were to ask that question here in the South, people might not take it the right way,” Bennett said. “So we have to be very careful about being politically correct, although we understand there is an issue [with higher smoking rates among gay Georgians].”
In addition to crafting anti-smoking messages that speak directly to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender smokers, Scout and Witeck said it’s important to deliver those messages through ...
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