“I’m convinced that turning a big problem like tobacco over to young people like yourselves will result in a solution that will eliminate the tobacco problem in Missouri,” Everett said. Right now companies spend $419 million each year to market tobacco in Missouri, much of it directed at youth, the replacement smokers for the 9,500 hundred Missouri lives lost each year to smoke-related illnesses.

In the coming weeks, the group, led by state-wide adviser and DHSS policy specialist Jamie Baker, from the St. Joseph area, plans to ask their peers statewide to help them design and implement a campaign that will change the way Missouri residents think about tobacco. A priority will be to convince policy leaders that even though much has been done in anti-tobacco, Missouri still ranks in the top five states with the highest smoking rate. In fact, a CDC report released this past week indicates that smoking rates nationwide have risen slightly, and Missouri has a grade of F from the CDC in terms of tobacco education, prevention and cessation efforts. Missouri also ranks second to last in the nation for state taxes on tobacco products - 17 cents per pack to South Carolina’s seven cents per pack.

During a brainstorming session,led by Jan Schwartz, tobacco educator from Maryville, Missouri area, the youth came up with some priorities:

• Involve the youth of Missouri to design and initiate a media and event campaign to counteract the advertising the "cool" image associated with smoking.
• Draw community awareness to the seriousness of the problem. Each year 7,500 youth become regular smokers, nearly one in four, (23.8 percent) of Missouri high school students smoke, and over 15 percent of all high school boys use some form of spit or chew tobacco and about 460,000 of today’s Missouri youth are projected to start smoking.
• Change the norms in the communities. About 26 percent of Missouri adults smoke.
• Educate parents and young people about the hazards of smoking.
• Reduce the cost of tobacco-related illnesses in Missouri - $2.13 billion
• Acquire more funding toward tobacco cessation, education and prevention efforts. The tobacco companies spend 419.9 million a year to market their products in Missouri - 178 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.

 

Young people present at the two-day event included the following:

Katie Ausmus, Brady James and Jessen Miller, and Jillian Weeks, from Edina; Meighan Austin and Lindsay Carter, Wheatland; Morgan Baker, Savannah; Abby Acre, Brosley; Mary DiValerio, Wildwood; and Maddie Elliston from Belton. Two college students, who are also employed by Missouri tobacco prevention programs were also present and helped mentor the students through the sessions: Billy Rucker, a senior at Missouri Baptist and a school liason for the Youth Empowerment in Action Program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Traci Harr, a graduate student in Public Affairs at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Both Harr and Rucker started their anti-tobacco interests as high school students.