Mississippi youth in Adams, Jefferson and Franklin counties will recognize Kick Butts Day 2014 today by launching a new social media campaign called Secret Smoker.

Kick Butts Day is a national day for activism when thousands of youth around the world will speak up and stand out against the tobacco industry. As part of this year’s Kick Butts Day celebration, the Mississippi Tobacco-Free Coalition of Adams, Jefferson and Franklin Counties is joining with the Mississippi State Department of Health to launch a web series that will have youth all around the state asking, “Who is the Secret Smoker?”

The Secret Smoker campaign premieres today and will reveal new cliff-hanging episodes for the next five weeks on social media sites and YouTube, as well as thesecretsmoker.com.

On the website, viewers can vote on who they think the Secret Smoker is after each episode, play games where they must find something in each episode, answer trivia questions about the episodes on Facebook, engage in character profiles and interact through Facebook and Twitter to determine which character is the Secret Smoker.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 people every year. Each year, 3,100 Mississippi kids under the age of 18 become new, daily smokers.

Sixty-eight thousand Mississippi kids now under 18 will ultimately die prematurely from smoking, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Kick Butts Day is an opportunity for participating youth to speak out and tell others they are not going to be influenced by pressure to use tobacco products.

While Kick Butts Day is officially held on one day each year, our hope is every day will be Kick Butts Day in the fight against tobacco.

For more information on the Secret Smoker series, visit thesecretsmoker.com or follow @whosthesecretsmoker on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Paige Dickey

Mississippi Tobacco-Free Coalition

of Adams, Franklin and Jefferson director