Alaska’s Teen Ambassadors Take On New Tobacco Trends

Source from:  Fairbanks Daily News-Miner 06/20/2019

While Alaska sometimes lags behind other states in emerging trends, such is not the case with the newest generation of e-cigarettes.

The national high school smoking rate dropped by 70% in the period from 2000 to 2018; however, the use of various forms of e-cigarettes increased by 78% between 2017 and 2018. E-cigarette use by middle-school students, who traditionally don’t smoke as much as high school students, rose by 48% during the same period.

In Alaska, the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery devices has similarly grown to epidemic proportions, with a rising number of complaints from teachers and counselors that middle and high school students are vaping in bathrooms, the hallways and even in classrooms.

Though the onslaught of the electronic devices poses increased health risks among young users, Leena and Sonja Robinson, tobacco educators with the Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health Teen Ambassadors program, have reframed the problem as an opportunity to provide peer-to-peer education across the state.

At the invitation of the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, the Robinsons recently traveled to Dutch Harbor where they delivered hour-long presentations to four classes at Unalaska City High School.

Their presentation included slides, video clips and data explaining the negative health consequences from using e-cigarettes and other forms of tobacco. Following each of the presentations, students asked questions about the content of nicotine in syrups and the use of marijuana in the devices.

“Eighty-one percent of youth who’ve ever used tobacco start with a flavored product,” said Sonja Robinson, adding that the syrups used in electronic devices have gravitated toward myriad candy flavorings in recent years.

“Who do you think they’re (the manufacturers of the devices) targeting?” Leena Robinson said.

“They’re going after kids.”

The Robinsons also have a lot of information canned up for teaching young people and adults about other tobacco products such as cigars, cigarettes and hookah devices as well as the dangers of second-hand smoke and smokeless tobacco.

According to data from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which provides training and technical information to youth tobacco educators, 95% of smokers start before the age of 21.

The Robinson sisters became teen ambassadors a couple of years ago as part of YEAH, one of several wellness programs hosted by the Anchorage-based Rural Alaska Community Action Program Inc. Teen ambassadors attend a summit where they receive training and brush up on their public speaking skills to tell others about the harmful effects of tobacco.

“It’s a lot of fun,” says Leena Robinson. “You get to connect with a lot of other youth from across the state.”

In early June, the Teen Ambassador program consisted of four members, but other years the number has hovered around eight. To become an ambassador, a person must be between the ages of 14 and 18 and attending middle or high school during the years of service. The kickoff event for the next batch of ambassadors for 2019 and 2020 will be held June 26-28 at the BP Energy Center in Anchorage.