#VoicesAgainstTobacco - Quit Lying Big Tobacco - Vaping Challenge

#VoicesAgainstTobacco: Youth Take On Big Tobacco

Sponsor: American Heart Association

The Challenge: Explore how Big Tobacco lures kids into smoking and vaping and you can help end this.

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Challenge Summary:

Over 1 in 4 high school students now report that they smoke or vape tobacco. How did tobacco use become so common when these products are known to be deadly?

We want you to explore how Big Tobacco has succeeded in hooking kids and what we can all do to stop this.

Take this challenge to exercise using your voice to demand change and make San Diego a healthier place for all students!

Step 1: Explore

The Problem

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. The total economic costs of smoking are more than $300 billion per year. One of the best ways to stop tobacco-related illness and death is to prevent kids from ever picking up their first tobacco product.

Yet each day in the United States, about 2,000 kids try their first cigarette and over 3,500 kids start vaping. Now, 31% of all high school students report that they are currently using a tobacco product.

So what exactly is a tobacco product? Cigarettes, e-cigarettes (vapes), cigarillos and cigars, smokeless (chewing) tobacco, and hookah are all considered tobacco products. Tobacco products contain many harmful substances including nicotine, a psychoactive and addictive substance that affects the brain’s emotional and cognitive processing abilities. Tobacco use among youth increases their risk of developing major depressive orders, panic disorders, addiction to other substances, and academic problems.

The most commonly used tobacco product among youth is the e-cigarette. Over 1 in 4 high school students and over 1 in 10 middle school students use e-cigarettes regularly. The US Surgeon General has called youth e-cigarette use an epidemic.

If current trends continue, the US Surgeon General estimates that 5.6 million children will die prematurely in adulthood. This represents about 1 in every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger who are alive today.

Take a look at these resources to learn more about the youth tobacco epidemic:

Surgeon General releases advisory on E-cigarette epidemic among youth

Investigate

Why do kids start smoking or vaping in the first place?

Big Tobacco has been using predatory marketing practices to hook new customers for decades.

The tobacco industry knows that nearly 90% of smokers first try a tobacco product by age 18. But if someone has not started using tobacco by age 26, they are likely to never start. This is why the industry actively targets kids.

The industry targets kids with marketing through social media, magazine advertising, youthful images, and retail advertising for decades.

The industry also puts very high amounts of nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco, in e-cigarettes. One e-cigarette pod can contain as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. Because young brains are particularly susceptible to the addictive properties of nicotine, approximately 3 out of 4 teen smokers end up smoking into adulthood.

Check out these resources to see how Big Tobacco targets kids:

We encourage you to seek out other reliable resources for your research. Always make sure that other sources are presenting real information that can be checked in more than one place, from a trusted, unbiased voice. Pay attention to credentials (who created it- where they got their sources) and when the information was last updated.

Potential Solutions

Get the Facts: Educate yourself

Take Action: Stop if you’re using, Use your voice to make a difference

Step 2: Plan

What do you need?

• Phone/Computer to record video

• Notebook/pen to write out research finds and outline your video

Time & Place

• Give yourself plenty of time to research- follow your interests when it comes to where your research leads!

• When you are ready to record your video, give yourself time (1-2 hours) to write, rehearse, and then record

• When recording your video, find a place with good lighting and little background noise, that is safe for you to record.

Step 3: Do

Action Steps:

*If you are using tobacco in any form, consider quitting. Check out these resources to help you on the journey to become tobacco-free:

Research:

Use the links and videos above and other reputable, peer-reviewed resources to investigate smoking, vaping, and other tobacco use (like chewing or hookah use).

Look into the health risks, long-term consequences, history of Big Tobacco, flavored tobacco products, etc.

Keep track of your sources- we would love to see where you got your information.

Create a Video:

1. Choose two or more video prompts from the list below or another creative video idea

   1. Tell us what smoking or vaping looks like among your friends, family, or classmates.

   2. Tell us what you think about Big Tobacco’s tactics to hook kids.

   3. Tell us what you learned in your research that shocked you.

   4. Show us who you are and why you choose not to smoke or vape!

2. Choose your prompts or another creative idea

3. Write a script or outline for your video; consider using information or take aways from the research you did!

4. Practice. Run through your video idea 3-5 times until you feel ready to record

5. Record your video on your phone or computer

6. Post on social media with the hashtags #VoicesAgainstTobacco and #BetterSD

Here are a few examples of some videos that have been made- these are only examples and we encourage you to make yours unique to your voice!