DEAR ANNIE: The facts about tobacco use are startling. Every day, nearly 4,000 kids under the age of 18 try their first cigarette, and another 1,000 become regular smokers. To hook kids, tobacco companies spend billions of dollars each year targeting kids like me with advertising near schools and malls, and they even alter these deadly products to look and taste like candy! They also oppose efforts to make it more difficult for kids to obtain cigarettes.
With almost 20 percent of high school students who are current smokers, we need a change, and it needs to be both youth led and adult supported. Cigarette companies cannot survive unless kids smoke, so I am thankful to be working with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids as a young advocate to fight to reduce tobacco use and its devastating consequences on youth.
Your readers can get involved by visiting www.tobaccofreekids.org to learn more about what is being done in their community and how they can help. — Judy Hou, age 17, volunteer at Y Street, The Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth, Richmond, Va.
Many thanks for your terrific letter. We hope it will inspire readers to become involved, as well as convince others not to take that first puff.
ANNIE’S MAILBOX is written by Kathy Mitchell, top, and Marcy Sugar, P.O. Box 118190, Chicago, IL 60611, or email@example.com.