JACK JACKASS
I am a an internal medicine physician and founder of Grace From Fire, LLC, an organization named after my mother and focused on preventive medicine. Before medical school, my beautiful mother, who was a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer. As a physician, I often felt powerless to help many of my patients who were dying from the diseases caused by tobacco. I began to feel the focus should be on trying to stop people from smoking rather than trying to treat the horrible diseases that smoking causes.
As I learned about tobacco, I began to realize that most people become smokers as adolescents. They don’t smoke to destroy their body or themselves; they smoke to become part of an “in” group, or to express their individuality or rebelliousness against parental authority. However, this is merely an image “sold” by tobacco companies, and the reality is teenagers become addicted to a deadly product that only profits the tobacco industry.
Jack Jackass and his cadre of smoking friends and family ridicule the image of social success that tobacco companies market. Initially he was created as a means of media literacy for students in classrooms. However, I started giving my patients who stopped smoking diplomas featuring the character and they started putting them on their walls and sharing them on social media. It was then that I decided to create a smoking cessation program in comic book format featuring the character to give people who want to become free from cigarettes a program to help them do so.
I hope you enjoy this website, and if you currently smoke cigarettes I hope you enjoy the free comic!
- Dr. David Lippman