Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Friday, April 22, 2022 @ 12:09 p.m. / Community, Health, Local Government
Community Workshop Will Explore Solutions to Youth Vaping Including a Tobacco Retail License
Photo: Ecig Click, via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License.
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After teens received a disappointing response from local elected officials regarding youth vaping, Tobacco Free Del Norte and NorCal4Health will reach out to parents to let them know what it is and how prominent it is in the community.
Tobacco Free Del Norte and NorCal4Health’s two-hour workshop at Del Norte High School on Saturday will also feature a discussion on tobacco retail license ordinances as an effective tool to curb youth vaping.
This discussion comes about a month after Crescent City Councilors and Del Norte County supervisors failed to vote one way or the other on a proposed tobacco retail license ordinance targeting the flavored e-cigarettes Del Norte High teens say get their peers addicted.
Members of the Tobacco Free Del Norte Coalition met following that March 29 joint City Council-Board of Supervisors meeting, said Crystal Yang, health education coordinator for Del Norte’s Tobacco Use Prevention Project. Coalition members decided to “take a step back” and focus on education before tackling the tobacco retail license issue again, she said.
“Obviously we’re pretty disappointed at what happened at the joint meeting, but it’s not going to hold us back from trying,” Yang told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Friday. “Eventually we’ll bring it back, but it might take a little bit of time to focus more on the topic at hand and focus more on education.”
In addition to holding a community workshop focusing on vaping, Yang said members of Del Norte High School’s Standing Together Overcoming addiction with a Radical Movement student group to reach out to peers at the elementary school level.
Options also include partnering with prevention programs through the Del Norte County Public Health Branch to do more tobacco education among middle and high school students.
“But, I mean in terms of policies, I think the TRL is the best tool for that,” Yang said.
Amber Wier, program director for NorCal4Health, initially approached the Crescent City Council in April 2021 with the idea for a tobacco retail license.
In January, she presented the results of a California Healthy Kids Survey that showed vaping had increased among Del Norte County seventh-graders from 3 percent in 2015 to 11 percent in 2021. The survey also showed an increase in vaping among high school juniors, rising from 16 percent in 2015 to 22 percent in 2021.
That California Healthy Kids Survey also included statistics for non-traditional students attending Castle Rock Charter School and Sunset High School, showing vaping had increased from 49 percent in 2015 to 58 percent in 2021.
According to Yang, the Tobacco Free Del Norte Coalition hopes to get more community support for a tobacco retail license, including parents who are willing to speak up and share their stories.
“Since the joint meeting, we’ve had a few people reach out to us about their children who have been affected by vaping,” she said. “We’re trying to get more community involvement before we take it back to our elected officials.”
The youth vaping workshop will be held from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday in Room A-2 at Del Norte High School. For more information, call the Tobacco Use Prevention Project, call (707) 951-2914.
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