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Teens speak out against tobacco By Kyrie Long
Alaska Pulse Monthly
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he last decade heralded in a wave of new trends and topics, including new tobacco products and devices. But it also brought in a new generation of teens standing against the harmful effects of nicotine and tobacco use. Leena Robinson, a 16-year-old from Nenana, said many people in her life are addicted to tobacco and have been affected by it. She’s a part of a group called Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health. “So, I decided I was going to learn facts about tobacco and what the harms were,” she said, “and so I can tell my relatives that there are many problems with tobacco and this is why.” Now there’s a campaign in Alaska, made with teen input, to spread that message far and wide. It’s the “Not Buying It” campaign, where the teen input helped develop messages that would resonate better with their age group. 12
An urgent response
Teen use of vaping or e-cigarettes has risen so high that in December 2018 Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared it an epidemic in the U.S. Starting in summer 2019, EVALI, an acronym for “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung illness,” swept through the United States. The state saw its first confirmed case in November, after a teenager in Southeast Alaska was hospitalized. In late December, Congress elected to raise the age for purchasing tobacco to
ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com
21 nationwide, and President Donald Trump signed the new restriction into law on Dec. 20. By January 2020, the president’s administration announced flavor restrictions, to include fruit and mint flavors, for cartridge-based e-cigarettes. Alaskans were at work throughout 2019 to engage Alaska’s young people on the subject. “This campaign was put together in part because of the increase in teen vaping use that we were seeing in public health. EVALI came along afterwards,” said Cheley Grigsby, program manager for the Alaska Tobacco Prevention and
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