Phoenixville Kids Will Kick (Cigarette) Butts Wednesday

Kids in Phoenixville will team up with the rest of Pennsylvania and stand up to Big Tobacco Wednesday as they join thousands of young people nationwide for the 20th annual Kick Butts Day. More than 1,000 events are planned nationwide for this day of youth activism, sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The Phoenixville YMCA is working with the Phoenixville Area Middle School Teens Against Tobacco Use, the Phoenixville Hospital and Phoenixville Communities That Care to host a three-on-three basketball tournament at the Y, located at 400 E. Pothouse Road. A flash mob performance by the kids is also planned between the games.

On Kick Butts Day, kids encourage their peers to stay tobacco-free, demand that tobacco companies stop marketing deadly, addictive products to them and encourage elected officials to do more to reduce youth tobacco use.

This year, Kick Butts Day is focusing attention on how the tobacco industry still spends huge sums on marketing and is adopting new strategies to reach young customers. Nationwide, tobacco companies spend $8.8 billion a year – one million dollars every hour – to market tobacco products.

In Pennsylvania, tobacco companies spend $431.2 million annually on marketing efforts. The industry’s tactics that entice kids include:

Splashy ads in magazines with large youth readership, such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine and Rolling Stone.

Widespread advertising and price discounts in stores, which make tobacco products appealing and affordable to kids.

New, sweet-flavored tobacco products such as small cigars and electronic cigarettes. The latest surveys show that youth use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed.

In addition to organizing events, kids are standing up to the tobacco industry on social media through the #NotAReplacement selfie campaign. The tobacco industry’s own documents reveal that they have long targeted kids as “replacement smokers” for the more than 480,000 people their products kill each year in the United States. Kids are taking selfies to say they’re not a replacement and sharing the photos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the #NotAReplacement hashtag.

In Pennsylvania, tobacco use claims 22,000 lives and costs $6.38 billion in health care bills each year. Currently, 18.4 percent of Pennsylvania’s high school students smoke.

For a full list of Kick Butts Day activities in Pennsylvania, visit www.kickbuttsday.org/map. Additional information about tobacco, including state-by-state statistics, can be found at www.tobaccofreekids.org.