Friday is Take Down Tobacco National Day of Action and TriCounty Health is focused on educating youth as to why they should never start as well as encouraging all that use to do the work to quit. Health Educator Ashley Linschoten visited the Evans Family Media studios on Tuesday to share information on the movement. Locally, there have been cases of kids vaping as young as 10 and it’s known that 90 percent of adult smokers started their addiction as teenagers or earlier. This makes it clear that educating youth is critical in the fight against tobacco as peers can encourage each other to be anti-tobacco. The SWAT program is a great way local students are doing this. TriCounty Health Department accepts scholarship applications every year from Uintah and Duchesne County high school juniors wanting to work as part of Students Working Against Tobacco. SWAT members receive scholarship money for post high school education of up to $4000 dollars for serving on the SWAT team through their senior year. Applications are due by April 7th with the winners announced on April 14th. Applications are available at www.tricountyhealth.com/swat. To learn more about the Take Down Tobacco movement, visit www.TakeDownTobacco.org.
