Another ‘ugly truth’ ad
One of our first interview respondents, Jovante*, a 19-year-old African American artist, mentioned this ad from the ugly truth campaign (“the nation’s largest smoking prevention campaign for youth and young adults“): For Jovante, this ad was suspicious. He thought it was over the top, did not make sense, and that it suggested ulterior motives on the part of the people behind it. Although the ad’s explicit message is anti-smoking, Jovante …
“Hey, y’all got to understand – y’all prolly scared of us… we scared of y’all too!”
UPDATE: This post was reblogged at Ethnography Matters – Street-level recruiting, downtown Oakland, Broadway 13th to 16th, Oscar Grant Plaza (formerly but officially known as Frank Ogawa Plaza). We’ve been talking to all kinds of people – students, workers, merchants, customers, pimps, players, hustlers, dealers, addicts, sex workers and eyeballing the BART police roust a youth for nothing that I saw. I’m standing in clouds of cannabis smoke exhaled from …
E-cigarettes
There’s a lot of discussion today about e-cigarettes. Will they help current smokers quit smoking? Will they jeopardize public health efforts that aim to make cigarette smoking socially unacceptable, or could their popularity further denormalize cigarette smoking? Will they be a gateway into cigarette smoking for young people? If e-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes, does stigmatizing e-cigarettes threaten public health efforts?
Getting to a place of stability
This respondent was a foster youth who recently transitioned to independent status in terms of the state. She had been on the streets in the past, but she currently lives with her girlfriend and attends a vocational program to be a chef. She said she smokes to relieve stress. “The City is losing manners… value and dignity,” she feels, and she said there isn’t much respect anymore. She smokes when …
Stories have weight
The past two years have been exciting for our team at the Center. Our first project interviewing Black youth about stigma and tobacco use has been eye opening, and we’re spending most of our time now coding interview transcripts and conducting analyses. We’ll be posting more on that in the future. We’ve also started a new project on Intoxication and Gender (Geoffrey Hunt is the Principal Investigator on that one) …