EAST ORANGE, NJ — East Orange resident Jihadah Sharif is on a mission to stop people from smoking.
At 78 years old, she has lost several family members to smoking-related illnesses: her father and four of her six siblings all died from side effects caused by long-term smoking. Sharif herself was a smoker for a long time, and she is now feeling the results.
“My father died when I was 16 from smoking, but we didn’t know then what it did,” she said in a phone interview with the Record-Transcript on March 31. “As we grew up in the 1970s, we started hearing that smoking wasn’t good for you, and there’s chemicals in cigarettes that make you addicted.”
Sharif is the oldest of seven children. Only two of the seven siblings in Sharif’s family never started smoking. Of the five who did, she is the only one still living. Sharif does not have lung cancer but says that her lungs are forced to work overtime as a consequence of her years of smoking. Since she got sick, Sharif has dived more deeply into learning about the dangers of tobacco, in an effort to prevent people from starting to smoke. Her campaign, “Stop in the Name of Love,” works with schools and community groups in the area on anti-smoking education.
“When my sister first got sick, she continued to smoke,” Sharif said. “Her grandson said, ‘Why don’t you love me?’ and she didn’t know what he meant. Then he said, ‘You’re still smoking.’ After that, she stopped. So not smoking is for you, but also for your children and your family and your community.”
Sharif has partnered with the Newark YMCA, area churches, Boys & Girls Clubs, and the East Orange Community Center to work with young people, teaching them about the dangers of smoking. Sharif has expanded outside of East Orange and Newark as well, going to an after-school program in Irvington to write plays with students.
“We wrote plays about what could happen and then acted them out,” she said. “I also went to a school in Newark, and we talked about entertainers who have died from smoking, like Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr.”
Sharif manages her own health by exercising, saying she slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic but has recently ramped her routine back up again.
In addition to anti-smoking education to discourage people from picking up cigarettes in the first place, she wants to encourage government and health officials to incorporate this education into public health recommendations, along with healthy eating.
“This is something we can bring in to involve the whole community,” Sharif said. “I want to get tobacco out of the community.”
Several of Sharif’s programs can be viewed online at https://tinyurl.com/54p8x5h4.