Local teens take part in national Kick Butts Day

Tired of smoking going on in and around areas with children present, a group of local teens decided to “kick butts,” Wednesday.

Taking part in national Kick Butts Day, the NyE Communities Coalition led a group of teens, made up of local middle school and high school students, in helping clean up discarded cigarettes at Ian Deutch Memorial Park.

“What we’re doing today is picking up cigarette butts in the playground areas in order to clean up our playgrounds and reduce the exposure of tobacco use to young people, said Sierra McKillips, youth advisor for NyE Communities Coalition. “The goal is to spread awareness to teenagers about the dangers of tobacco use.”

The event, which is sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, is in its 20th year nationally, with the coalition taking part in it since its inception in 2000. The hope of the volunteers involved is to see some changes, as past efforts have yielded results.

“If we take all of the cigarette butts we collect today and we present it to the town, we usually can get signs up saying, ‘no tobacco use in the park around the playgrounds,’ as we have in the past,” McKillips said. “Just encouraging parents to keep secondhand smoke away from kids.”

Not all the work to promote the issue is physical labor that the teens are carrying out. McKillips said there will also be a movement going on with social media.

“We also are doing #NotAReplacement campaign, which is pretty much telling the big tobacco companies that these kids aren’t going to be your replacement smokers that you’re hoping for,” she said.

In addition to cigarettes, the event is also being used to spread awareness of the dangers of smoking hookah, which is popular among teens and young adults.

Often seen as a healthy alternative to cigarettes, hookah smoke can be far more damaging than a traditional cigarette.

One hour of smoking hookah is like smoking 100-200 cigarettes, with the average hookah session lasting 40-45 minutes, opposed to the five to ten minutes it takes to smoke a cigarette.

Smoking tobacco through water doesn’t filter out the toxins as many mistake, and a hookah still contains nicotine and could also include metal and other toxins.

An estimated 3,000 children under the age of 18 try their first cigarette each day, and 700 children who have already tried their first cigarette will become regular smokers.

In Nevada, it is estimated that 1,900 children under the age of 18 become regular smokers each year.

About 80 percent of adult smokers became regular smokers before the age of 18. Around $1.8 billion is spent on healthcare costs for smoking-related illnesses and 3,300 Nevadans die from smoking-related illnesses each year.

Trying to help curb those numbers, McKillips said helping teens develop productive interests is key and in turn will help send a message to tobacco companies.

“We’re not going to keep your tobacco companies alive,” she said. “We’re going to stay active and do healthy living.”