What is the SmokeOUT Tour? The SmokeOUT Tour is a program put on by YOUTHanasia Foundation, Inc. in community partnership with the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco Free Living. The tour is a concert series that allows a group of teen singers, dancers, actors, rappers, and musicians to actively participate in the prevention of tobacco use among youth. The teen “stars” of the SmokeOUT Tour perform songs they have rewritten into no smoking anthems, act out spoofs on popular commercials glamorizing the use of tobacco, and creatively distribute information regarding smoking prevention to their audiences. All teen performers and adult staff have been trained in MediaSharp!

What is MediaSharp? MediaSharp is a creative learning tool for teaching critical thinking, problem solving, and production techniques in a nonjudgmental, nonauthoritarian style that appeals to young people. Using alcohol and tobacco as its focus, MediaSharp aims to engage educators and youth leaders—and ultimately youth themselves—into a critical analysis of overt ads and hidden media messages. Through MediaSharp, young people analyze how messages from the media can influence their health and spending behaviors, and help them assess the effect media has on their personal, family, and community health. Typically they rely on actual samples of ads or excerpts from television and movies. This learning is then put into action as participants make their own media messages. Often these youth-directed messages feature another point of view: positive lifestyles, and the deglamorization of messages that promote smoking or drinking. Overall, in the process, youngsters quickly pick up on how lead characters in ads, movies, billboards, etc., are targeting them and offering unrealistic messages. Often youngsters go beyond analysis and spoof ads that promise romance to those who buy a certain brand of beer, or smoke a certain brand of cigarette, often in hilarious ways.

What is the mission of the SmokeOUT Tour? The SmokeOUT Tour allows teenagers to actively participate in decreasing the use of tobacco among their peers. The tour also educates teenagers about the deceptive tactics media outlets use to convey hidden messages used to glamorize the use of tobacco, and alcohol!

The Great American Smokeout
Every year, smokers across the nation
take part in the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout® by smoking less or quitting for the day on the third Thursday of November. The event challenges people to stop using tobacco and raises awareness of the many effective ways to quit for good. Go to www.cancer.org for more details!

Kick Butts Day
An annual event sponsored by the Campaign for Smoke-Free Kids that allows kids to take center stage in the fight against tobacco. Kick Butts Day allow kids to get two messages across: They want the tobacco industry to stop targeting them with advertising and they want elected leaders to do more to protect them from tobacco. Link to kickbuttsday.org

World No Tobacco Day
World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world every year on May 31. The member states of the World Health Organization created World No Tobacco Day in 1987. It draws global attention to the tobacco epidemic and to the preventable death and disease it causes. It aims to reduce the 3.5 million yearly deaths from tobacco related health problems.
History of World No Tobacco Day: In 1987, the World Health Assembly passed Resolution WHA40.38, calling for April 7, 1988 to be "a world no-smoking day." , In 1988, Resolution WHA42.19 was passed, calling for the celebration of World No Tobacco Day, every year on 31 May. In 2006, a smoking ban took effect in Ontario and Quebec on May 31.