Children and Tobacco: The Facts

Things You Can Do to Help Support the Movement to Get Tobacco Out of Our Children's Hands

• Support an existing tobacco control group through giving financial contributions or volunteering your time -- or both; remember, they're fighting an opponent -- the tobacco industry -- that has nearly unlimited resources.

• Download the fact sheets you see here, reproduce them, and distribute them to members of your organization, put them in a newsletter, or include them in a mailing to members and affiliates.

• Encourage your own group to join efforts with other, larger organizations. A list of major organizations is included on this site.

• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, emphasizing the seriousness of the tobacco problem among youth.

• Encourage children and teens in your area to join the fight. Get them to declare their local public areas, schools, playgrounds, and playing fields and courts "smoke free." One group of teenagers in Massachusetts convinced a local mall to become smokefree. A group of 7th grade girls in the same state managed to get vending machines banned in the public places in their town of Gloucester.¹

1. Sara Rimer, "Antismoking Fight Enlists a Teen-Age Corps," The New York Times, August 19, 1995, p. A1.