Letters: Midcoast residents oppose flavored tobacco
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Big tobacco targets populations who experience minority stress, discrimination, stigma and other systemic harms with targeted advertising and promotions.
I am a public health professional with a specific interest in working with populations that have higher risks for poor health. I worked in HIV prevention for several years. I was naïve to big tobacco’s manipulations to hook vulnerable people when I started working in tobacco prevention. I did not know about the higher rates of smoking among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people back then. Now I know that for 20 years, more people with HIV have died from a tobacco related disease than directly from HIV.