Students in Kingman took center stage in the fight against tobacco on Tuesday and Wednesday when they joined thousands of young people nationwide in the 15th Annual Kick Butts Day.
Sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Kick Butts Day is an annual event where kids educate their peers on the dangers of smoking and how tobacco companies try to target youth.
On Tuesday, students at the Kingman Academy of Learning High School handed out literature and hosted a table displaying visuals of tobacco's dangers along with a graffiti wall for youth to write powerful messages about tobacco's toll on them and their loved ones.
The Kingman High School in Kingman will be doing a similar graffiti/pledge wall as well as a numbers campaign to represent the number of kids in Arizona who start smoking each month at 10 a.m. According to the campaign, tobacco use is the No.1 cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people and costing $96 billion in healthcare bills each year.
While there has been significant progress in reducing youth smoking, 20 percent of high school students still smokeAccording to the campaign, in Arizona, tobacco use claims 6,800 lives and costs $1.3 billion in healthcare bills each year.
Currently, 22.2 percent of the state's high school students smoke, and 22,900 kids try cigarettes for the first time each year.
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