Local teens ‘Kick Butts’

MAT-SU — A group of local teens and community members recently took part in the annual Kick Butts Day.

The event, a nationwide campaign to raise awareness for tobacco use and, more specifically, provide resources for quitting, was a major focus for student groups like Peer Helpers and TATU (Teens Against Tobacco Use) from Valley high schools in their efforts to reduce the number of teens who start to use tobacco products.

“We’re trying to do the best we can to get tobacco out of reach of teens, and move the Valley to a healthier direction,” said Clancy Shepard-Weber, a junior from Pathways Peer Helpers.

Different schools around the Valley took part in a variety of activities for the day. At Valley Pathways, Peer Helpers members spray-painted “stop secondhand smoke” on the snow. Wasilla High School used ITS famous street-side fence to share the message “tobacco kills.” And at Wasilla Middle School, Peer Helpers created a “1,200” chain event, posting pictures of the number around the school and wearing shirts to represent the number, answering those who asked what it means that it’s the number of people who die from tobacco related illness each day.

The teens ended the day’s campaigns by convening at the AT&T Sports Center to bring their message to kids attending Night Courts, an event sponsored by the Mat-Su Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition and Community Sports Inc. to offer kids a drug-free environment to hang out and play sports instead of spending time on the streets, where an interest in drugs could grow.

“We brought Kick Butts Day to Night Courts because we thought it would be a good partnership in community; show programs working together,” said Misty Jensen, a TATU and Peer Helpers adviser. “It’s a good youth venue, and the whole purpose is to help kids be safe and drug free.”

“There’s typically over 100 people at Night Courts regularly,” Shepard-Weber added. “It just made sense to bring TATU and Night Courts together.”

The tables near the entrance were filled with information, facts and displays about tobacco use. The group even offered “quit bags,” cellophane bags filled with quit line resources, motivational items and candies to have in place of a cigarette. In Alaska, Youth Risk Behavior Survey results show that 14 percent of youth report smoking habitually, a number that is three times the national average. And the number of 18- to 29-year-olds recorded as smokers has grown to 32 percent.

Melissa Mudd, a TATU and Peer Helpers coordinator, shared that big tobacco companies’ advertising campaigns target kids by making smoking look cool in order to replace customers dying from the product. Something, she says, that’s “just not cool.”

“If we can help kids from starting or quitting, especially as teens, then we can stop that risk of early death and other problems with tobacco use,” said Sara Wilber, Alaska Family Service’s Tobacco Prevention Coordinator and TATU leader. “Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death — more than AIDS, fire, murder and car crashes combined — in our country, and we’re just trying to help.”

Dylan Gette-King is a senior at Palmer High School.