[July 29, 2011] Summit arms teenagers with tactics to fight tobacco Tweet Jul 29, 2011 (El Paso Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Dozens of students from El Paso and Otero counties and Las Cruces are learning during a teen summit this week how movies, advertising and other forms of media expose youths to tobacco use. Penny Downs, program coordinator for Children in Need of Services in Alamogordo, said its Stomping Out Tobacco Teen Empowerment Summit, which began Thursday, hopes to discourage tobacco use among youths. She said about 90 percent of smokers start before age 19. "This is our first conference and we plan on doing more," Downs said. "They're bombarded by media, so we're helping them understand how to read it." During the summit, Downs said, about 70 teens will produce a video and post it on YouTube in hopes that it will go viral. "Tobacco companies target youth to try and get new users," Downs said. Yessica Delgado, 14, who attends Clint High School, said she decided to participate in the summit in hopes of reaching out to family members who smoke and who may be influenced by seeing smoking in movies and music videos. "It's a bad message," Delgado said. "It's like a virus. It wants to get to us and destroy us." The summit is hosted by the Paso del Norte Heath Foundation, Rio Grande Safe Communities, Texas A&M Prevention Resource Center and Colonias Program, University Medical Center's Teen Advisory Board and several other community organizations in El Paso and New Mexico. Adriana M. Chavez may be reached at [email protected]; 546-6117. To see more of the El Paso Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.elpasotimes.com. Copyright (c) 2011, El Paso Times, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]