PAVe: Big Tobacco Messed with the Wrong Moms

Episode 026 : A Native American Mom’s Fight to Protect Her Community

February 08, 2021 Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes
PAVe: Big Tobacco Messed with the Wrong Moms
Episode 026 : A Native American Mom’s Fight to Protect Her Community
Show Notes

On this week’s episode, Rae O’Leary, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, describes how JUUL representatives offered hundreds of thousands of dollars and free products to hook her tribe on what they falsely described as “smoking cessation” products. 

In 2019, O’Leary, who leads public-health initiatives for Missouri Breaks in Eagle Butte, South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, testified about this meeting at the Congressional hearing investigating JUUL’s marketing to teens. (In fact, that’s where we “wrong moms” met.) Hear, this tobacco-control educator and advocate--whose leadership led her tribal council to pass one of the strongest smoke-free air policies in Indian country--share her community’s historic struggle to fight Big Tobacco’s predatory behavior, especially towards Native American teens.