TOBACCO ADS PREY ON GAY INSECURITIES

Q`GOT A LIGHT?'' Those are the first words that many gay men and
lesbians dare to speak to another gay person. Especially in a gay
culture too long dominated by smoky bars, a cigarette can seem like a
handy prop -- a sexy conversation starter, a menthol-flavored
confidence booster.

The tobacco industry's hooks are deeply embedded in the gay
population. Gay people, struggling not to feel like outcasts, are
especially vulnerable to cigarette makers' pitches: Smoke and you'll
be tough, cool, sophisticated, desirable. Smoke and you'll fit in.

Preying on insecure teenagers and young adults, tobacco companies lure
first-time buyers by offering tantalizing new self-images, craftily
designed to satisfy an emotional craving. ``What's going on with gay
boys is that for $1.50 they can become the Marlboro Man. (Many
cigarette ads) are selling masculinity,'' says San Francisco
epidemiologist Ron Stall, who studies gay men's health. ``For a lot of
young gay men, that's an attractive hook.''

The hook for me -- as a high-school girl frightened of anyone
discovering I was gay -- was a don't-mess-with-me brand. I bought the
image and took home a habit that I couldn't shake for seven years. I
count myself lucky, though, knowing that many who try just as hard to
escape tobacco never do.

Now the merchants of death are reaching out to gay people as never
before -- buying glossy ads in national gay publications, sponsoring
gay events. We should not accept their blood money. The tobacco
industry is as much an enemy of a healthy gay population as its
favorite senator, Jesse Helms.

Gay smoking rates are truly alarming -- 36 percent of gay Americans
over 18 smoke, compared with the U.S. average of 30 percent, reports
Yankelovich Partners, a research firm. Gay youth are leading the huge
surge in teen smoking. Fifty-nine percent of self-identified gay and
bisexual high school students smoke, compared with 35 percent of their
peers, a 1995 survey of Massachusetts public schools found.

We gay adults have a responsibility to start treating tobacco as a
serious threat to our community. It's not some minor concern to be
ignored while we focus on AIDS and breast cancer.

Smoking compounds HIV health problems, research shows. And as an
editorial in the Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association
points out, smoking is ``as potentially lethal'' as heroin. Lung
cancer alone claimed 12,000 gay lives last year, if 8 percent of its
total victims were gay -- probably a low estimate.

Our community's urgent need to liberate itself from tobacco struck me
recently when I saw that a gay youth conference was packed with chain
smokers. Likewise, the lobby at a fundraiser for lesbians with cancer
was thick with smoke. The solution, of course, isn't to nag or blame
smokers. Instead, we must make lowering our smoking rate a real
community project.

Friends can form a cheerleading squad for a pal who's trying to quit.
Or two smokers can quit together, suggests Bob Gordon of San
Francisco. ``Tell each other you're going to be even more wonderful
when you can climb the stairs without wheezing,'' says Gordon. His gay
anti-smoking group helped distribute 70,000 ``Kick Butt'' matchbooks
with upbeat messages like, ``When YOU quit smoking, after only eight
hours, oxygen levels return to normal.''

Marj Plumb, another San Franciscan, wrote the successful proposal for
the first government-funded gay stop-smoking course between drags on a
cigarette. In many attempts to ``quit for good,'' she's learned, ``The
first couple of days are simply physical withdrawal. Do things that
reduce symptoms -- exercise, eat healthy food. The emotional
withdrawal is harder for me. So, for the first couple of months you
need to stay away from smokers. It's that simple and that hard.''

Tobacco is a leftover prop from gay people's self-hating days. We
can't change that past, but we can keep our future from going up in
smoke.

Deb Price is the news editor at the Washington bureau of the Detroit
News. Write to her in care of the Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive,
San Jose, Calif. 95190.

Checked-by: Don Beck