Since the early 1990s, tobacco companies have targeted the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to boost their sales, according to the Center for LGBT Education, Outreach and Services.

Lisa Maurer, coordinator of the center, will discuss how tobacco companies target the LGBT community and ways people can quit or cut back smoking at a lecture and video screening tonight. The program, called “Selling Out: How LGBT People Have Become Targets of Big Tobacco,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. in Williams 221 as part of National LGBT Health Awareness Week.

Big tobacco companies advertise in LGBT magazines, using symbols like the rainbow and words such as “pride” and “freedom,” Maurer said. She said the tobacco companies call their initiative Project Subculture Urban Marketing — or Project SCUM.

“Is that a harmless acronym? I don’t think so,” Maurer said. “That project specifically says they want to target gay men. It’s specifically called Project SCUM in order to sell more cigarettes.”

Tobacco companies also sponsor LGBT national events such as the AIDS Walk, she said. Companies set up and invite people to use a smoking lounge where members of the events can go to smoke and receive free packs of cigarettes.

Maurer said it is important for the LGBT community to become educated about the tobacco companies’ schemes to encourage more people to buy their products.

Maurer’s talk is paid for by part of a $3,150 grant from the Tompkins County Tobacco Control Coalition for the LGBT Center to promote programs on LGBT health.

“When I first started telling people in the LGBT community on campus about this grant, most had no idea that our communities were targeted specifically,” she said. “When we see ads in our magazines, in our community, we are much more likely to use the products in the magazines, whether it’s cigarettes or shampoo. The companies who advertise in our magazines — we give them a lot more [credit].”

One of the group’s ongoing projects, Quit Kit, contains pamphlets on ways to cut down on smoking and facts about why smoking is dangerous to a person’s life. Quit Kits are available in the LGBT Center, the Health Center, the Counseling Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Junior Michael McMahon, a member of the LGBT community, said he was not aware of the tobacco companies targeting LGBT people. He said that if he had time he would go to the session to learn more.

“I don’t think the LGBT community is specifically targeted from the rest of the general population,” he said.

McMahon said he started smoking because of stress and because he has been around smokers all his life.