My name is Hallie Bennett, and I’m a senior at Sperry High School. I’m a part of the Leadership Team for Youth Action for Health and Leadership (YAHL). I’ve worked closely with other Leadership Team members at Sperry High School to collect surveys, host events and present the CounterAct Tobacco campaign to our town hall.

If you do not already know, CounterAct Tobacco works on moving the power out of Big Tobacco companies’ hands and into ours. We accomplish this by collecting surveys, hosting events, doing partner presentations and meeting with local elected officials at town or city hall meetings. Our goal is to remove preemption to allow our local key leaders to add comprehensive tobacco retail licensing, which includes vapes and e-cigarettes. This licensing will make it harder for youth to obtain these products. 

We host events at our school’s sporting and community events while also presenting to different clubs and businesses in our community. Before we host events or present to these different organizations, we reach out to our campaign manager and the place where we want to host an event or present. Our events and presentations can be very impactful and provide us with several different measures of progress towards our campaign goals.

This campaign is important because too many of our youth are getting their hands on vapes and e-cigarettes due to these products not being under the comprehensive tobacco retail licensing law. Additionally, there is a lack of education on this topic in our communities.

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By: Hallie Bennett, Sperry High School