For Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Tobacco Is a Social-Justice Issue

Decades ago, smoking crossed the boundaries of class and race. Hollywood celebrities, corporate executives, and factory workers all smoked. Camel famously ran magazine ads saying: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”

Today, few doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, or, for that matter, program officers at big foundations smoke cigarettes. But while smoking has practically vanished among well-educated, well-to-do coastal elites, nearly 40 million U.S. adults, many of them low-income and less-educated, continue to smoke cigarettes.

For the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health and a longtime supporter of anti-smoking campaigns, tobacco has become a social-justice issue.

In contrast to Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has made e-cigarettes the centerpiece of its tobacco work in the United States, Robert Wood Johnson focuses grant making on “populations disproportionately harmed” — that is, poor people, rural whites, and people of color. Much of that work unfolds in 13 states in the South and Midwest, whose high smoking rates have earned that area the nickname Tobacco Nation.

“We really are trying to bring an equity lens to our tobacco-control work,” says Matt Pierce, a senior program officer at the foundation.

Less Awareness

Pierce says the anti-smoking movement has become a victim of its own success because fewer people realize that smoking remains a major public-health problem. “The people who continue to be harmed by commercial tobacco products tend to be less visible,” he says.

Robert Wood Johnson made about $10 million in tobacco-control grants in 2020. Many went to groups led by people of color such as the National Alliance for Hispanic Health and the American Indian Cancer Foundation. American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest prevalence of cigarette smoking of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control says.

Brett Duke, Nola.com, The Times-Picayune

The Center for Black Health & Equity, a research, advocacy, and communications nonprofit in Durham, N.C., received a set of three grants for about $2.6 million. The center offers smoking-cessation programs designed to reach Black people, and it organizes No Menthol Sunday, a faith-based day of discussion about the impact of tobacco on Blacks. It is building a network of advocates to push for restrictions on the sales of menthol tobacco products in 15 states.

“Menthol helps make the poison go down easier,” says the Ritney Castine, a pastor and co-host of “Black Body Health,” a podcast sponsored by the center. “It leads to greater addiction.” Of the African American teenagers who smoke, about seven in 10 use menthol cigarettes.

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The Black Women’s Health Imperative, which got a $1 million grant from Robert Wood Johnson, last fall launched a program called See Us — it stands for Socially/Emotionally Empowered and Unapologetically Smoke-Free _ on seven historically Black college and university campuses. It seeks to combat what the group calls the “predatory marketing tactics of the tobacco/vaping industry that target Black women” and to remind students that smoking-related illnesses are the number-one cause of death among Blacks.

Against All Tobacco Products

The anti-tobacco campaign makes no distinction between e-cigarettes and combustible tobacco, says Shana Davis, senior program director at the women’s health group. “We are very much behind bans on all flavored tobacco products,” she says.

So is Robert Wood Johnson. In comments to the FDA filed in 2019, Richard Besser, the foundation’s CEO, called for a ban on all flavored e-cigarettes, cigars, and menthol cigarettes.

Besser wrote: “It is critical that we continue to reduce initiation of tobacco products among young people, particularly those from marginalized populations that have been disproportionately harmed by tobacco products.”