WHAT’S NEW
Seen Enough Tobacco Day
In honor of Seen Enough Tobacco Day, Niskayuna High School students put up cups-in-a-fence at the school to highlight the disturbing fact that 5.7 disposable vapes are discarded every second in the U.S. That amounts to almost ½ million a day.
Albany park clean-up and chalk the walk
Reality Check members recently spent a Sunday afternoon picking up litter and “chalking the walk” at Swinburne Park in Albany. In one small area near the playground and soon-to-be-reopened splash pad, members cleaned up hundreds of cigarette butts along with other trash. The chalked facts and stats called attention to the harm caused by tobacco litter. In 2020 New York State banned smoking in all public parks, including in municipal parks. The clean-up made it clear that more needs to be done to foster compliance with the policy, including educating community members and posting visible signs. Many municipalities throughout the state have also banned the use of e-cigarettes in parks, but currently the City of Albany has not. Reality Check members, Amra, Ashita, and Myla spoke before the Albany Common Council on August 4th to...
NYS Adult Smoking Rate Falls Below 10%
The prevalence of cigarette smoking among New York adults fell to 9.3%, marking the first time the rate has dropped below 10% since smoking rate surveillance began. The data comes from Cigarette Smoking New York State Adults, 2023, an updated reported recently released by the New York State Department of Health. In 2000, when the New York State Tobacco Control Program was established, the adult smoking rate in New York was 23.2%. “This is reason to celebrate as cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and disease in our state,” said Jeanie Orr, Director of Capital District Tobacco-Free Communities. “Unfortunately, there is real concern that the progress made over the past quarter century will be more difficult to sustain because of federal program and funding cuts.” Read the entire press...
To the left is a typical tobacco product display. If you don’t use tobacco, you may not even notice, but kids do. Kids see. Kids notice. Kids remember. In fact, kids are more than twice as likely as adults to notice and remember retail tobacco marketing.