SAFE and TAC of LI Educate Youth on Kick Butts Day 2018

Kick Butts Day is a once a year National Day of awareness and youth activities that encourages and supports youth taking a stand against Big Tobacco. This year Kick Butts Day was celebrated on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 across the Unites States and internationally. This was the 22nd year since the day was first organized by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The SAFE Glen CoveCoalition and the Tobacco Action Coalition of LI (TAC) in our ongoing partnership to raise awareness of the problems of tobacco use in the City of Glen Cove, and to enlighten and empower youth to reject the tobacco industry's deceptive marketing and stay tobacco-free, once again are bringing our message to the Community, Schools, Organizational and Religious Leaders and Electorate that we need to work together to take positive action to protect kids from a lifelong addiction to tobacco.

This November in a historic decision; more than 11 years after a federal court first ordered them to do so, the major U.S. tobacco companies must begin publishing “Corrective Statement” advertisements. The Agreement stipulated the details for implementing the television and newspaper advertisements ordered by the court. The advertisements containing the Corrective Statements about the health dangers of smoking stem from a landmark lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in 1999 and a landmark judgment issued in 2006 by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler. Judge Kessler found the tobacco companies were guilty of civil racketeering laws and of lying to the American people for decades about the dangerous health effects of smoking and their marketing to children.

U.S. Department of Justice, Judge Kessler ordered the tobacco companies to publish corrective statements regarding 1) the adverse health effects of smoking; 2) the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine; 3) the lack of significant health benefit from smoking “low tar,” “light,” “ultra-light,” “mild” and “natural” cigarettes (products that have been deceptively marketed as less harmful than regular cigarettes); 4) the manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery; and 5) the adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke.

Big Tobacco must tell the public the full truth about how lethal their products are over the course of one year. According to Carol Meschkow- TAC-Community Engagement Manager, the results of this lawsuit help us reinforce our messaging to the local youth about the dangers of tobacco marketing. For the past decade through our work with Dr. Sharon Harris- Executive Director, of SAFE and Co-Chair of the Coalition we have seen many sectors of the Community successfully ban together to help change the social norms associated with tobacco use to protect local youth from initiation to this deadly habit.

Despite significant progress in reducing smoking, tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, killing more than 480,000 Americans and costing the nation about $170 billion in health care expenses annually. Alarmingly, the Tobacco Industry spends $8.1 billion dollars marketing their products in stores and elsewhere in communities throughout the U.S.

To learn more about the harmful effects of tobacco visit: www.tobaccofreenys.org or for help with quitting contact the State’s Quitline at: 1-866-NY-QUITS.

For more information about the SAFE Glen Cove Coalition visit SAFE at: www.safeglencove.org, or follow on: www.facebook.com/safeglencovecoalition.