Kick Butts Day aims to get Vermonters to quit

Eighteen Vermont schools joined high schools around the country in honoring National Kick Butts Day on Wednesday.


www.rutlandherald.com

Kick Butts Day aims to get Vermonters to quit Katelyn Barcellos | March 21, 2018 Eighteen Vermont schools joined high schools around the country in honoring National Kick Butts Day on Wednesday. The day and other events this week aim to raise awareness of the consequences of tobacco use, the toll it takes on their communities, and most recently, the dangers of flavored tobacco products marketed to younger generations. “Thank goodness for Kick Butts Day,” said Rhonda Williams, chronic disease prevention chief at the Vermont Department of Health. “It helps to channel youth voices around tobacco and how it impacts their lives. It’s one of our program’s highlights.” Statewide school-sponsored Kick Butts events included the #BeTheFirst initiative at Springfield High School and Riverside Middle School, where students and community members pledge to support the first tobacco-free generation. Other events included “Dirty Laundry” displays at both Burlington and Danville High School highlighting tobacco industry quotes and and the Vermont Department of Health’s claims that deceptive marketing tactics are designed to reel in America’s youth and get them hooked on tobacco products. Bellows Falls Middle and High School students participated Wednesday in a “Chalk the Walk” exercise, drawing quotes and statistics about the tobacco industry outside their schools in sidewalk chalk. They’re staging the event again Monday. Williams said the tobacco industry openly acknowledged wanting to create “replacement smokers” in the nation’s youth population. “Youth engagement as a part of tobacco control has been instrumental since the early 2000s when the master settlement dollars and the CDC started funding states to tackle the problem of tobacco,” she said. According to CounterBalance, an extension of the Vermont Department of Health launched in 2014 that targets youth tobacco use, at least two-thirds of youth tobacco users use non-cigarette tobacco products like e-cigarettes, cigars and chews because of their popular flavors, and the majority of youth ages 12-17 who report ever trying tobacco started with a flavored product. With the exception of menthol, cigarette flavors have been banned since 2009, but are still readily available in “tobacco alternatives,” such as cigarillos, cigars, dips, chews and e-cigarettes. The Department of Health said more than 85 percent of tobacco retailers in Vermont sell flavored tobacco alternatives. Williams said there are now over 7,000 flavors of tobacco products that come in candy flavors, cereal flavors, and even Pop-Tart flavors. “Young people often have the misconception that flavored tobacco products are not as harmful,” Williams said. “But flavors do not make tobacco safer.” According to CounterBalance’s website, 90-percent of new tobacco users are younger than 18, and the tobacco industry spends an average of $24 million per day marketing their products. In response, Vermont has been especially proactive on restricting youth access to both cigarettes and alternative sources of tobacco such as vaporized products over the past five years, Williams said. “We passed a bill in 2016 restricting the use of e-cigarettes, which helped not only reduce use in workplaces and protected public places, but also strengthened social norms around e-cigarettes and the fact that they don’t belong in the hands of youth,” she said. “We now see the Vermont use of e-cigarettes is lower than the national average. We’re still making progress.” But every day nationwide, more than 3,000 people younger than 18 try smoking for the first time and 700 become new regular, daily smokers, the Kick Butts campaign says. Tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing more than 480,000 people every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than alcohol, car crashes, murders, suicide, AIDS, drugs and fires combined. The Vermont Department of Health says tobacco kills more than 800 state residents annually. Williams said going forward, there is discussion at the state level over joining Hawaii, California, Oregon, New Jersey, and Maine by amending the tobacco purchasing age to 21. “It’s a strategy shown to reduce purchasing of tobacco products, and studies show that youth purchasing and use going down,” she said. “That’s what we want to see.”