Dear Editor:
I wish every teenager could have been there, seen it and joined their peers from across New Jersey for our recent youth rally at Liberty Science Center to launch New Jersey’s new youth anti-tobacco advertising campaign Not for Sale.
The students were members of REBEL, which stands for Reaching Everyone By Exposing Lies, a grassroots anti-smoking movement launched last November by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services.
A tremendous energy, enthusiasm — and sea of white T-shirts inscribed with the rallying cry of Not for Sale — filled the Liberty Science Center. I saw and felt it and so did Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco. More importantly so did over 700 teens who were there to declare independence from Big Tobacco.
These kids understand tobacco is addictive and tobacco marketing can manipulate them. The Not for Sale campaign empowers teens to resist manipulative advertising and to take action by telling what they call Big Tobacco they’re not for sale.
The ad runs during MTV programs like Road Rules and Real World, the WB network shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek and through other mediums.
While the ads are important, skill-building activities are as crucial to ensure the teens develop coping skills to help in many situations.
New Jersey is spending $30 million in this fiscal year of its proceeds from the 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement on tobacco control programs with the same level proposed in the next budget. The funds are for public awareness/media, smoking cessation, youth programs, community-based programs and research and evaluation.
Teens are the state’s rising generation of leaders. Their choices will reshape social norms and further reduce the acceptability of smoking. Over 1,000 young people are already ambassadors for the state’s anti-tobacco campaign.
The Department held the first statewide youth summit last November allowing almost 350 teen leaders to acquire skills to become anti-tobacco advocates. They adopted REBEL as their movement; now they have their own web site at www.njrebel.com.
Because of New Jersey’s success in its youth movement, we are receiving a three-year, $2.2 million grant from American Legacy Foundation. And we plan to hold nine regional youth summits in the next 18 months.
A year ago, I pledged to state legislators that the Department would apply the $30 million in funding from the Master Settlement Agreement to effective citizen driven programs. The infrastructure is in place — a lot has been accomplished in the first year.
New Jersey is the first state to offer every resident two new free cessation services: New Jersey Quitline at 1-866-NJ-STOPS/1-866-657-8677), a toll free hotline, and Jersey Quitnet (www.nj.quitnet.com), an Internet site targeted at younger smokers. Both services are backed up with counseling site.
Almost 39 percent of high school students use some kind of tobacco product. At the current rate, nearly 135,000 local teens will die of a tobacco-related disease.
Yet the rally showed that these numbers are unacceptable to many youngsters. There are teens in the state who are empowered — and are Not for Sale.
Commissioner Christine Grant
New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services