HONOLULU (KHON2) — In Hawaiʻi, there’s an educational campaign aimed at teaching children about the risks of vaping.
This initiative involves schools, health organizations and community groups distributing materials and hosting workshops to inform students about the health dangers associated with e-cigarettes and to discourage their use.
The American Lung Association (ALA) has highlighted an urgent need for Hawaii to protect our ʻōpio from tobacco and e-cigarettes, noting a significant rise in vaping amongst our high school students.
According to ALA research, nearly 30% of these students currently use e-cigarettes which is a sharp increase from 25% in 2018. This trend underscores the growing choice of Hawaii’s keiki to vape and the importance of targeted action in Hawaii.
ALA data shows that amongst Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, there is a 39.5 percent rate of usage for high school students who have reported being current e-cigarette users. According to ALA, this is nearly nine percentage points higher than the average for the state.
In Hawaii, the Hawaii State Department of Health leads public health initiatives and campaigns against vaping amongst Hawaii’s ʻōpio population. The Hawaii Public Health Institute (HIPHI) is also a key nonprofit that works on public health issues, including anti-tobacco campaigns and vaping education.
Meanwhile, the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaii and ALA focus specifically on reducing tobacco use and vaping amongst Hawaii residents and lung health education which includes efforts to prevent youth from vaping, respectively.
Then there are the schools. There is a great deal of collaboration in the Department of Education to educate.
So, with all the talking heads doing what they do to get the word out, KHON2.com decided to investigate how keiki want to be talked to about issues like vaping.
For this, we turned to three award-winning student filmmakers from Kauai.
Aubrey Bechard, Rachel Chidester and Stella Blanchard from Kauai High School. They recently produced a public service announcement (PSA) that won BEST PSA at the Olelo Youth Exchange Awards in April. Thousands of keiki from across Hawaii submitted their film projects to be considered for awards across multiple genres, issues and topics.
Their PSA is titled, Vape Free: The Way To Be.
What did Bechard and Chidester say? “Keep it simple, clean and easy to understand.”
“When we made our PSA, we wanted to make sure that younger generations, people our age, could understand exactly how it’s impacting you,” explained Bechard. “So, we really prioritized how we visually showed each of the different parts, ingredients, the ingredients of a Vape.”
And they did just that.
“So, we had our nickel, our lead, our battery acid; and we showed that with bright colors because that also connects to the vaping industry and how they market to children with bright colors and young people,” added Bechard. “[Children] interpret that as something that’s good when in reality it’s very bad for you.”
Chidester added that “by the end of the video, the water or the liquid ended up like a black-brown color to symbolize that’s what you’re actually putting into your body.”
These innovative and insightful students have even used their creation to educate their family and friends.
“I have younger siblings at home, and I wanted to make sure that they understand how bad vaping is in a way that they can understand it,” said Bechard. “So, it’s important to us that we made it like simple, clean and just easy to comprehend.”
So, if you are looking for a good way to talk to your keiki about vaping, then look no further than this PSA. You can see the trio’s PSA at the end of the interview video that is above.