It’s Tuesday, January 5th. By the time I finish work, it’s completely dark in Seattle and the traffic is thinning. I bolt uphill on foot to Capitol Hill, where I’m about to meet strangers—I’m hoping for five, maybe six.

I’m the last one to arrive at the Gay City Health Project, so I blush when I walk through the doors and all faces turn to me. More than five, more than six. There are twelve! These men and the two other facilitators are seated all around a table with nametags. I introduce myself, apologize for my tardiness, and thank them for welcoming me.

We are the Out To Quit group: a gay men’s tobacco cessation support network. I look at each of these men at the table, all ages, different races, and I smile. I’m going to help these men quit smoking.

What makes tobacco a gay issue?

According to the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network, the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT, or generalized “gay”) community is about 35% to 200% more likely to smoke than the general population.

This is a big deal.

The results produced by these studies are broad because our community is so diverse. Factors like age, gender identity, religion, socio-economic status, race/ethnicity, and access to cessation resources all play large parts in the gay community’s tobacco dependency. But one thing is certain: gay Americans are more likely to smoke than straight Americans.

Why is this? Many researchers have found this unequal tobacco use is due to high concentrations of advertising toward the LGBT community. In our newspapers, in our style magazines, in our community centers and bars and clubs: we are inundated with images of cigarettes and how beautiful they will make us, how fun they are… how riveting it is to be a camel… (I never got that, either).

Tobacco companies aggressively market deadly products to obtain the “gay dollar” by sponsoring Gay Pride events, offering free cigarettes for personal information registry, providing free coasters and napkins to gay bars, and more.

In the mid-1990’s, R.J. Reynolds tobacco company drafted a report to launch an ad campaign targeting gays and the homeless in San Francisco. The report was titled, “Sub Culture Urban Marketing,” or, “Project SCUM.” Though SCUM has been dissolved after court battles in 1998, Big Tobacco is still after the gay dollar. Gay employees are often hired to market cigarettes to us, from us.

As if advertising saturation wasn’t enough, add the unique pressures of the gay American, and you’ve got a struggle to combat.

The LGBT community in America suffers prejudices and discriminations that other groups don’t. In many states, and in the entire U.S. Military, we can legally be fired from our jobs for being gay or transgender. Anti-gay social norms, disparate civil rights, adoption and marriage inequalities, disproportionate HIV infection rates, and insurance battles lead to high levels of stress and alienation among gays.

Anxiety and loneliness lead to false comfort solutions like cigarettes. Cigarettes (which contain highly-addictive nicotine) become a reflex, and before you know it, we’re hooked.

35 to 200% extra hooked.

But there is hope. Industry leaders in tobacco cessation like Free & Clear have high success rates and can help all folks quit. With cultural competency training, our Registration staff and Quit Coaches are equipped to reach out to the LGBT community.

Small support groups like Out To Quit are also widely successful.

Tuesday’s meeting was an introduction: a call to action. Lark, Dan, and I will be facilitating this seven-week support group for our participants. This group of men will start out identifying why they smoke, why they want to quit, and developing goals for themselves. Then, as a group, the participants will support each other through this journey—all the struggles, all the successes.

I will keep you readers updated every week with the stories. You’ll get to “meet” the guys, get to know them, and follow us through the process from beginning to end. Find out what it looks like when gays fight tobacco, one quit at a time.