Teens Tackle Tobacco- Butts, E-cigs, Schools & More

Welcome to the fifth year of Air Health Our Health! This posts accompanies today’s “Back to School” podcast episode. My kids are constantly exposed to flavored tobacco imagery despite my own best efforts. I was shaken just earlier this week to learn that one of my daughters has a peer who vapes- my daughter isn’t even in middle school yet. We closed last season highlighting the intersecting threats of tobacco not only as a health threat but also a significant source of highly toxic pollution. Fortunately, young people are engaged in combating this dual threat to their health. I interviewed two of these teens last spring after being introduced to them through the Sierra Club by the Environmental Justice in Tobacco Control Project of the Sierra Club.

Keshav Narang spoke to me as a member of Sierra Club’s Young Adult Advisory Board, where he focuses on limiting tobacco waste, and Acterra’s Student Ambassador Program (ASAP), where he aims to increase sustainability in local schools and contribute at city council meetings through public comments. Finn Ceja spoke to me as a 19 year old sophomore in college in Central Valley of CA, and an individual passionate about advocacy. Keshav has since graduated high school and is starting college now, and Finn wrapped up a young adults summit over the summer, in which they learned about public policy, hosted peer-learning sessions about tobacco product waste, organized a cleanup, and planned a statewide day of action and young adult conference. In our conversation for this episode, I learned a great deal about how to engage with teens about e-cigarettes, the importance of understanding how tobacco pollutes our air, water and bodies while worsening climate change.

They both shared about the massive toll of pollution caused by the tobacco industry. They discuss how tobacco already infiltrates our schools, and what they have seen in their peers. They reflect on how smoking and tobacco use, vaping, can provide “automatic friends,” and that considering quitting vaping can feel like a risk of losing an entire social network. However, there is hope! There is growing social support for breaking free of nicotine addiction to both combustible and e-cig tobacco.

I sincerely appreciated how engaged Keshav and Finn are as well as their empathy for their peers that are struggling to break free of their addiction to tobacco products. This industry is so predatory, and most of its regular consumers want to break free from it. I want our communities to break free as well to free not only the bodies of our loved ones from the harms of smoking and vaping tobacco, flavored products and more, but also to free our waterways from the microplastics of cigarette butts and our communities from toxic e-waste from vaping devices.

So what can you do?

Learn more by going to the Sierra Club’s StopToxicTobaccoWaste.org . If you go to their policy tabs page, you can see a host of ideas on how to decrease the toll of tobacco pollution in your area
Flavored tobacco products are designed to hook young people like Keshav and Finn, as well as kids even younger, the age of my daughters. Fight flavored tobacco where you are- if there is a flavor ban being considered at the state and local level, get involved! For example, several Oregon counties have passed a flavor ban, and I’m hoping we will get a statewide ban passed this year. Listen to the prior podcast episodes on flavored tobacco to learn more.
Advocate for a ban on selling cigarettes with cigarette butts. They are a plastic that don’t make cigarettes safer for the user, and they increase microplastics likely in the body of the smoker and certainly in our environment.
Consider a donation to the Sierra Club, to support the work they do in helping the environment in all ways, including keeping it free from tobacco waste.