Career Youth Development Inc. (CYD) Youth are being trained to work in the communities they live in to make a positive impact.
Recently CYD Youth received their training in advocacy from Senator Lena Taylor & Representative Mandela Barnes, along with the team at the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention Poverty Network at St. Mark’s AME Center. CYD Youth discussed how local grocery stores are selling single cigarettes to youth and people in living in poverty.
The Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention Poverty Network brought youth to the training to educate them so they can spread the facts to friends and families.
As reported by the National Health Institute; single cigarettes were sold significantly more often to minors than to adults, and when both could make a purchase, minors paid more for these singles than did adults.
Single sale cigarettes were least likely to be sold in white neighborhoods, and more likely to be sold in integrated neighborhoods, but the highest concentration of single sale cigarettes were in minority neighborhoods.
CYD Youth see this is a step forward in a public education campaign, especially since smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S., causing more than 440,000 deaths per year; costing the U.S. more than $150 billion in direct and indirect costs annually.
African Americans currently bear the greatest burden of morbidity and mortality due to smoking.
For instance, total mortality from lung cancer is 21% higher among African Americans than among Caucasians, and African American mortality from stomach cancer is 127% higher than that of Caucasians.
Analyses have suggested that tobacco-related disparities between African Americans and Caucasians are so profound that reversing them could help eliminate all cancer disparities between these racial groups.
Herb Byers, said “we at the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention Poverty Network are excited in the education process of our youth; we want to continue to work and train youth to take charge of their neighborhoods, their health, destiny and to make choices that are positive and safe.”
People in the Pictured Attached are: CYD Youth, the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention Poverty Network, CYD Staff and Representative Mandela Barnes.