Overview

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What We Do

From January 25-March 2, 485 students and their adult sponsors attended the Say What! Texas Tobacco-Free Leadership Summits to learn about policy advocacy and plan a project to take back to their communities. Six Say What! Summits were held across the state, with groups representing 46 different communities.

This year's Say What! Summits focused on training students to be active in tobacco policy at the local or statewide level. Locally, students were encouraged to work with their city council or school board on strengthening existing policies concerning tobacco use or to create new ones if one does not exist.

At the statewide level, each group selected one of three strategies that were developed at the 2013 Texas Youth Summit (www.texasyouthsummit.com) by student delegates from across the state:

• A comprehensive statewide clean indoor air law to protect all citizens of Texas from the harms of secondhand smoke. Texas is the largest state in the nation that still does not protect all of its citizens from secondhand smoke.
• Increase tobacco taxes by $1.50 across the board with a portion of that funding going toward tobacco prevention programs. Currently, the cigarette tax is $1.41 per pack, making us 25th in the ranking of states nationwide. However, the tax on cigars is $0.01 per ten, and on loose tobacco products it is $1.19 per ounce.
• Allocate more funding from the Texas Tobacco Settlement to prevention. The state allocates a mere 2.4% of the Center for Disease Control's recommended amount toward prevention.

Each group then decided to either gather letters of support or to gather signatures on a petition in support of the strategy they chose. Groups developed a timeline and plan to gather letters and signatures over a period of a few weeks and prepare to flood the Capitol with support of the strategies before April 12.

Funding for Say What! Texas Tobacco-Free Summits comes from the Texas Department of State Health Services and allows TxSSC to offer these elite training services FREE OF CHARGE. We cover registration fees, training materials, lodging and meals; each group simply covers transportation to and from the summit.

 

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What to Expect!

The Say What! movement was developed by youth and continues to be a youth-led movement. 

Say What! Summits are led by the Texas Teen Ambassadors, who lead interactive activities and discussions that include individual leadership development, small group team building, and commitment to a larger cause.

Informational sessions are based on the latest research released by national partners in tobacco control and prevention. To ensure that the information is relevant to youth and easy to understand, these sessions are developed and delivered by the Texas Teen Ambassadors.