The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council for the Concho Valley is teaming up with the San Angelo YMCA to hold a youth kickball event and educate children about the dangers of cigarette this Wednesday at 9am at 353 South Randolph Street. Additional events in Texas and across the country can be found at www.kickbuttsday.org/map.

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Kids in Texas will stand up to Big Tobacco on March 16 as they join thousands of young people nationwide for Kick Butts Day. More than 1,000 events are planned across the United States and around the world for this annual day of youth activism, sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

On Kick Butts Day, kids demand that tobacco companies stop marketing deadly products to them and encourage elected officials to help reduce youth tobacco use.

This year, Kick Butts Day is focusing attention on the outrageous marketing tactics tobacco companies still use to target youth. These tactics include:

  • Splashy ads in magazines with large youth readership, such as Sports Illustrated, Glamour and Rolling Stone.
  • Widespread advertising and price discounts in stores, which make tobacco products appealing and affordable to kids.
  • Sweet-flavored tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes and small cigars that come in flavors like gummy bear, cotton candy, watermelon and fruit punch. While youth cigarette smoking has fallen to record lows, the most recent government survey shows that e-cigarette use among high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014 (from 4.5 percent to 13.4 percent).

Nationwide, tobacco companies spend $9.6 billion a year – over one million dollars every hour – to market tobacco products. In Texas, tobacco companies spend $631.7 million annually on marketing efforts.

“On Kick Butts Day, kids stand up to the tobacco industry and all of us, especially our elected officials, should stand with them,” said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “We’ve made amazing progress in reducing youth smoking and can make the next generation tobacco-free. Elected officials in every state should help reach that goal by supporting proven strategies to prevent youth tobacco use, including higher tobacco taxes, strong smoke-free laws, prevention programs and raising the tobacco age to 21.”

In Texas, tobacco use claims 28,000 lives and costs $8.85 billion in health care bills each year. Currently, 14.1 percent of Texas’s high school students smoke.

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