Dover teens take on big tobacco

Dover Community News
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/dover/d5_21c.htm
Fri May 21, 2004

Eleven students from Dover Youth to Youth were part of a group of 150 anti-tobacco youth advocates from around the world who gathered in East Hanover, N.J., to receive
training about the tobacco problem and to protest at the annual Altria shareholders’ meeting on April 29. Altria owns Phillip Morris, the maker of Virginia Slims, Marlboro and other well known brands. The meeting was held at Kraft Foods headquarters.

Student groups and adults came from seven other states, including Hawaii, New Mexico, and New York. Other students attending the training and protest came from countries such as Ukraine, Thailand and Senegal.

“We are holding the board of directors accountable for the company’s role in spreading the global tobacco epidemic,” said Vicki Hebert of Dover Youth to Youth. Tobacco kills 4.8 million people worldwide each year.

On Wednesday, April 28, students attended various workshops on tobacco related topics to prepare them to be as professional as possible at the stockholders meeting and protest. These workshops taught them skills such as dealing with the media and developing effective visuals. Some students were able to exercise their creative spirit by learning songs to protest with, and in street theater skits with an anti-tobacco theme. There were also students who participated in creating a magazine to document their experience and also writing press releases to be distributed to various media groups present after the protest.

At the protest, youth held signs with phrases like “People over profit” and chanted slogans such as “If you stop lying, people stop dying.” Some Dover students were wearing red and-white cardboard cigarette packs bearing the words “Licensed to Kill.”

Other youth activists, including Kaitlyn Reilly, a sophomore at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, were able to gain entrance to the shareholders’ meeting to voice their opinion to stockholders, and ask questions of the Altria board of directors.

Dover Youth to Youth is an extra-curricular group of about 250 students from Dover schools who are interested in leading a drug-free lifestyle and taking an active role in drug prevention. The group is supervised by the Dover Police Department’s Community Outreach Bureau. The students come from Dover High School, Dover Middle School, Saint Mary Academy and St. Thomas Aquinas High School. For information, call program coordinator Dana Mitchell at 516-3274.