Mt. Sinai Youth Raise Awareness about the Impact of Tobacco Use

Mt Sinai middle school youth participated in a “chalk the walk” activity – using colorful chalk-written messages to engage the community in high volume areas - to raise awareness about the dangers of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes. Tobacco companies spend half million dollars every day aggressively marketing tobacco products, including e-cigarette, in stores throughout New York State with colorful walls of tobacco product and other marketing materials.

“In class the students learned the harmful effects of nicotine and tobacco and marketing behind e-cigarettes,” said Dave Clark, Mt Sinai Middle School Health teacher. “Ultimately vaping, smoking, tobacco use has the same hook just sharpened in a different delivery of nicotine,” added Dave Clark.

E-cigarettes are addicting large numbers of kids to nicotine, and studies show youth who use e-cigarettes are more likely to start smoking traditional cigarettes, including kids who never would have smoked at all. Just last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that youth use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed, with a 78 percent increase in high school students’ use of e-cigarettes – meaning that one in five high school students are using e-cigarettes. It also shows a nearly 50 percent increase in the use of e-cigarettes by middle-school students.

“We already know that e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among youth,” said Paulette Orlando, Tobacco Action Coalition Community Engagement Specialist.“Educating communities on Long Island and elsewhere about the harmful effects of nicotine and tobacco is key to helping parents, teachers and students address the issue at home before it becomes an addiction.”

According to the Tobacco Action Coalition, a grant program administered by the American Lung Association, here is what parents and teachers need to know about e-cigarettes:

• Understand that e-cigarette use among our youth is an epidemic. According to the CDC, e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among kids.
• Know what these products look like. These e-cigarette cartridges don’t look like traditional cigarettes or tobacco products – they look like USB drives that you’d stick in your computer. Some newer models even look like cell phones.
• These products contain nicotine which is addictive. Almost all e-cigarettes contain nicotine – even those that claim they don’t (because there’s no FDA oversight of the manufacturing) Of these e-cigarette products the most popular among youth are called JUUL.

Communities across NYS have begun to address these concerns by raising the age of sale of all tobacco products to 21, reducing the number of tobacco retailers, restricting locations of tobacco retailers and limiting price promotions.

To learn more, go to www.BreatheFreely.org

The Tobacco Action Coalition of Long Island(TAC) is funded by the NYS Tobacco Control Program through a grant administered by the American Lung Association. TAC consists of a community engagement component and a youth action component branded as Reality Check LI.Our work focuses on creating environments that are open to policy change to make Long Island a healthier place to live, work and play. TAC also supplies free tobacco education and cessation literature to local agencies and schools.