River Valley students join march against vaping
More than 300 youths from across the state converge in Sacramento
Several local students were a part of a statewide group that converged on the California Capitol this week to raise awareness about the dangers of vaping.
More than 300 youths from across the state gathered in Sacramento on Monday to inform state leaders about an epidemic of vaping by youths.
Six students from River Valley High School, part of the Student Advocates for Sutter County (SASC) youth coalition, attended, said Tammy Andersen, a health program specialist with Sutter County Public Health.
“It was absolutely amazing to see so many young people come together and passionately speak out about how tobacco effects them and their communities,” she said. “You could feel their enthusiasm throughout the day but especially during the march to the capital. Sometimes young people feel like they are not heard or that their voice doesn’t matter, but Youth Quest empowers them and they learn that their voice is important and how to use their voices effectively to advocate for change.”
“This E.N.D.S Now the products change but the addiction remain” was this year’s theme and it focused on the high rates of tobacco use among youth.
Ed Deming, a RVHS student and SASC member said it was a wonderful experience attending the Youth Quest event.
“The information I learned was alarming, it made me realize exactly how much of a problem this (tobacco) genuinely is for my generation and those following.” Deming said. “However it also reminded me that, even as youth, together we have a powerful voice. A very powerful experience.”
Andersen said in Sutter County, 22 percent of youth currently use some kind of tobacco product.
“We are very interested in learning if Sutter County follows the national data that was released during the fall of 2019 showing that e-cigarette use among high school students have increased by 78 percent and 48 percent for middle school students,” she said. “We do anticipate that Sutter County will follow the national trends just based on the reports coming from parents and school officials.”
She said last fall, Sutter County Tobacco Control received a report from a local elementary school where a fifth-grader was
we overcome such hate.”
Gleeson-preston learned of the mass shooting from friends back home in New Zealand; an old neighbor was one who rushed to the scene to help victims and place pressure on gunshot wounds. Though the population of Christchurch is around 375,000 people, she said it has always felt like a small town where everyone knew each other. In grade school, classes even learned about and toured the various churches, mosques and other religious entities in the area.
“I wanted to pay my respects and let them know that New Zealand is not the country as being portrayed as violent or hateful to any other culture,” she said. “I’m a proud Kiwi and that something so horrible like that can happen, you take it personally.”
Abdul Kabir, a former board member of the Islamic Center, spoke to how the massacre caught with a JUUL device (a type of e-cigarette).
“The student had brought the JUUL to school and shared it with several of his classmates. The school officials were concerned about their young students and that school staff were not aware of some of the new vaping and e-cigarette devices,” Andersen said. “The Sutter County Tobacco Control Program and the Prevention and Intervention program, through the Superintendent of Schools, were invited to a teacher in-service to provide education on these new devices and the alarming trends to school staff.”
The Students Advocates for Sutter County is a coalition made up of ninth- to twelve-graders who work together to promote healthy lifestyles through community health education and youth advocacy activities.
In the past few years, SASC has advocated for smoke free parks, educated legislators at the California Capitol, shared their voice at city council and Board of Supervisors meetings, and conducted surveys and healthy retail assessments at all the tobacco stores in Sutter County.
was born of the Internet extremism that made the violence possible (the shooter live-streamed the attacks and, in his manifesto, made references to memes).
“This kind of thing speaks for itself; it’s insanity,” Kabir said Tuesday. “No reasonable person justifies it, it doesn’t matter who commits it or against whom.”
Kabir also recalled the 1994 arson of the Yuba City Islamic Center, which had just finished construction. The entire 12,000-square-foot mosque was burned to the ground and was deemed a hate crime, according to Appeal-democrat archives – prayer rugs had been soaked in gasoline and ignited.
“We’re very aware of the possible threat of violence to people who are identified in a certain way,” Kabir said. “That’s fresh in our memory.”
Still, when other community members reach out with
words of kindness and acts of solidarity (Kabir pointed to non-muslims all over the world standing shoulder-toshoulder to shield and protect praying Muslims in the following days), it shows the whole of humanity.
“That is the understanding that we have to seek – to grow within ourselves and within our communities. The entirety of mankind is our community,” Kabir said. “You can find inspiration in any encounter with another human being or in nature. That’s the ideology we need today.”
Gleeson-preston also noted what it means to band together, especially in times of tragedy.
“It’s being a proud Kiwi to let them know that not everybody is like the man who came in,” she said. “I’m sorry this happened to them because of religious beliefs and that’s not who New Zealanders are.”