Malta High School reACT! Crew teams with Malta Boys and Girls Club for Kick Butts Day

PHILLIPS COUNTY, MONTANA – Six members of the Malta High School reACT! Crew along with thirty-eight Malta Boys & Girls Club members took a stand against the tobacco industry during National Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids “Kick Butts Day,” Thursday, March 19th.

“Kick Butts day is an annual celebration of youth advocacy, leadership and activism for health and against tobacco,” says MHS reACT Co-President, Palmer Giblette, “The tobacco industry dupes people my age into smoking or using spit tobacco because they have to replace their customers who die from using their products.”

MHS reACT member, Shelby Brookie, presented a slide show she developed as part of the Kick Butts Day program at the Boys & Girls Club. Shelby informed Club members that tobacco companies spend – $8.8 billion a year –$24 million each day, $1 million every hour – to market cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products in the U.S., according to the latest Federal Trade Commission reports on tobacco marketing (for 2011).

“Tobacco companies keep finding new ways to circumvent restrictions and aggressively market their products,” stated Shelby. “Their strategies often have the greatest impact on kids – the “replacement smokers” (as one tobacco company document put it) for the more than 480,000 Americans who die each year from tobacco-related diseases.”

Brookie also shared some of the marketing strategies currently used by tobacco companies to entice kids including: Heavy marketing and discounting in stores; Slick ads in magazines with large youth readerships; Flavored tobacco products – cigars, smokeless tobacco and E-Cigarettes; and E-Cigarette advertising that re-glamorizes tobacco use.

Following the slideshow, the MHS reACT! Crew did a “They Put WHAT in Cigarettes?” presentation, which showed Club members the disgusting and harmful chemicals tobacco companies add to cigarettes to make them even more deadly. Afterward, members gave Big Tobacco companies a message by signing a “NOT A REPLACEMENT” pledge form. To complete the day’s activities, MHS reACT Crew members played a game of “Kick Butt’s” kickball.

“Of all the kids who are under 18 in Montana today, thousands of them will die early from smoking,” said MHS reACT Co-President, John Waters, “I don’t want that to happen to my brother, my sister, my friends – to anyone!” “Kick Butts Day is a great way for Montana teens to get involved in the fight against Big Tobacco and in the process teens can get involved in reACT!”

All of the activities were designed to raise awareness that tobacco will continue to be the No. 1 cause of preventable death in Montana and nationwide so long as youth are recruited into a lifetime of tobacco addiction by the tobacco industry.

If you would like to get help quitting tobacco, call the free Montana Tobacco Quit Line at 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) or go to their website at http://www.QuitNowMontana.com.