Roseland students 'Kick Butts' in anti-tobacco effort

There it was, blending right in between Slurpee posters, the same size and just as colorful: an advertisement for pie-flavored NJoy e-cigarette vape liquids.

“Everything they have is right next to something for kids,” said Valeria Mendez, a 16-year-old junior at Roseland University Prep High School.

“There’s an ad for pizza and soda and right under it an ad for vapes,” said Diana Ortiz, also a 16-year-old junior.

The girls were part of a “walking tobacco audit” Wednesday by seven students from the school’s peer education group, Project True. The event was part of the 20th annual national Kick Butts Day, during which thousands of young people nationwide try to raise awareness about youth tobacco use. It’s sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

This year’s awareness campaign focused on the tobacco industry’s spending on marketing strategies to reach young customers.

The Roseland students and their two advisers walked about a mile westward from their campus on Sebastopol Road in southwest Santa Rosa along Stony Point Road, visually inspecting how businesses market tobacco and alcohol products.

Ultimately, the Roseland students will compile their data and determine next steps - maybe creating a presentation for the school, parents or even the City Council, which is considering tougher restrictions on smoking in public or shared spaces.

They also may return to retailers and make suggestions if their data suggest the products are marketed to or are too accessible to minors.

Project True students are peer educators in the school’s Center for Well Being Project, part of the Knights Academy free after-school program for Roseland University Prep students.

Using research that shows youth smoking is more frequent when there are greater densities of tobacco outlets less than a mile from schools, the students fanned out with clipboards and cameras to document what they found.

“A lot of ads,” is what Miguel Garduño found at one liquor store. “Sometimes you can’t see inside the store because there are so many.”

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, tobacco companies spend $8.8 billion a year to market tobacco products. In California, that amount is $583.4 million annually, the group said.

Several students said they hadn’t noticed the ads before, but with a different eye, they see how carefully placed some of them are.

“Sometimes they are right behind the register so when a mom and kid come up to buy something, that’s all the kid sees,” Mendez said.

The convenience stores and liquor stores were the busiest with ads, while several of the small markets kept the colorful posters to a minimum, the students concluded. Some of that may have to do with contracts from cigarette suppliers that require retailers to display ads at specific heights or locations if they sell their products, advisor Ayano Healy told them.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids also sponsored a Twitter campaign on Wednesday, encouraging people to take selfies with #NotAReplacement, a reference to in-house tobacco industry documents calling for “replacement smokers” in the form of young adults.

Other events in California included a cigarette-butt cleanup in local parks and neighborhoods in Seaside and a plea to city leaders for stronger no-smoking ordinances and anti-smoking campaigns in San Diego that include health information about hookah and e-cigarette use.

In Eureka on Saturday, Eureka High School’s Friday Night Live chapter will organize a cigarette-butt cleanup to remove tobacco litter from Arcata Plaza.

You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 521-5470 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter?@loriacarter.