Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this Wednesday, February 19, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
In part two today at 430, we're going to speak with Pastor Eric Hanbrook from Loving
and talk about their Founder's Day celebration coming up.
Right now in studio, we've got some of the students from Rams and their fact organization
we're going to be talking to them about their initiatives, some tips, responses, and programs
into different things that they are up to.
What I would like to do first is kind of go down the line here and let you all introduce
yourselves.
Let's start right here.
Hello.
My name is Mia Dine.
Mia, thank you for being here.
Hello.
My name is Sage.
Sage.
Thanks for being here.
And I'm Emily.
Emily.
Thanks for being here.
Appreciate you.
Great job, you guys.
You've already nailed this.
You're already killing this interview.
Well, good work.
Good work.
I want to write away a note to the audience though.
There might be some confusion or maybe some misunderstanding or what have you because we just
talked to a fact organization, but Mia, the fact there's a different fact group for different
grades.
Is that how that works?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Great.
That's good to know.
And it kind of clears up a little bit.
Understandable why that would be.
You know, for different grades would be different, you know, concerns.
A lot of us are very removed from high school, very removed from high school.
It's been a long time, guys.
But there are certain things that even I remember from high school.
One of them, the difference is the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade.
How much life changes?
How many different things are in different concerns?
So the point of having a different fact group for different grades is that how it works
out for almost all the grades in junior high high school, all that.
Mia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Do you guys collaborate?
Do you guys talk to each other and work together at all?
Yeah.
Sometimes.
That's cool.
Very interesting.
So what I'd like to start off with is some of the initiatives that you guys have.
And we'll kind of start right there.
And I believe that Mia, you have that for us, right?
All right.
I'm sorry.
I knew I was going to do it at least once.
I get one time to mess up names.
That's it.
But you had some of those for us.
Oh, yes.
Some of the events we did.
Yes.
I wanted to start with a, we can start with events.
Yeah.
What have you guys been up to?
Um, so for fact, we did a drawing for a Starbucks gift card or a wellness and stress
kit that we gave out to the RAM students.
We posted a letter.
Um, it states, we know that this is a busy time of year.
There's homework, friends, after school activities, and the changing of seasons.
To make this time of year less stressful and to promote wellness, we wanted to share
with you some tools and materials to help.
Mental health is important.
This winter season, let's make sure we're reaching out and taking care of each other.
Enjoy some self-care materials.
Be well and talk soon.
Ram's back.
And so we had kids write down on a big sheet of poster.
Things that they, that one way that they can relieve stress in a healthy way.
And we got a lot of answers.
Um, sweets, candies, and chocolate are a Valentine's Day tradition.
Unfortunately, tobacco products like little cigars and e-sugrets have those flavors too.
Candy flavored tobacco products can be deceiving, but they have the same dangers as unflavored products.
Teens like me see flavored tobacco products every time we enter a gas station or even a convenience store.
As a member of fact, a youth-driven advocacy movement spreading the truth about tobacco,
I know how important it is for my peers and community to be aware of all the risks and deceiving tactics
tobacco companies use to lure youth.
To learn more about the work of fact groups throughout the state, visit facts movement.org.
Well done. Well done. Very well written.
Um, you know, you guys remind me of something.
I have a sheriff Sean Becker in once a month and I get to talk to him.
And one of the things that Sean and I have talked about a lot is ending the revolving door of crime.
And, and you repeat criminals.
Um, and some of that.
So when it comes to that, there's, uh, there's, there's a couple of ways of key ways of doing that.
One of the main ways of doing it is just asking, well, why did you commit this crime?
What happened in your life to make you want to do this?
And by asking that question, so many answers were brought to him and so many of them came back to mental health.
And it's not that different when we're talking about vaping or cigarette smoking or anything at any age, especially when you're young.
Um, people don't do this, uh, traditionally, don't pick up a vape or a cigarette, uh, when their life is perfect,
when they think they're like, you know, or something like that.
It's usually a stressor or something like that going on.
And as adults, we forget sometimes of how stressful it can be to be a teenager, how stressful it can be to be in school.
And, uh, I think that for some, it's so eye opening to be able to hear from you guys and hear from the, what, what you are concerned with.
Because it not only gives us an idea of what's going on, which is very important.
And we need to listen to kids more and more in this day and age.
But it's also helpful in this regard of, well, the best way to attack this, uh, topic is together.
Is adults and kids and sharing information and talking to each other and understanding that this really does begin with mental health.
So the idea of, uh, approaching that and at what you're doing there, I think is, uh, not only helpful and smart to your peers on a number of levels,
but certainly with the initiatives and what you guys are trying to do with the fact organization here and really bringing down those numbers of young people vaping or smoking and all of that.
Um, it's, it's a really smart move and it's a very well written piece too.
That's great. That's really good. Uh, how was that received? Was that received well?
I think so. Um, kids around like started contributing more to the fact organization.
And we had a lot of kids, you know, commit and a lot of kids even the ones who vaped and smoked and it was visible to us.
They contributed to the stress thing and they really helped us.
Very cool. Very cool. Good to hear.
And Sage, I wanted to ask you about the voices initiative. I see that that was something that you guys also did.
Yes. So, um, we gave kids the unfiltered youth voice initiative card.
It asks them, how has vaping and nicotine impacted your life?
And we got a couple of answers like, um, my brother was peer pressured to try a vape at school.
This broke our relationship and trust with each other.
Then he started dating this girl and it got worse, especially because he was vaping and lying about it.
This broke my heart because I couldn't even talk to my brother knowing that he would do something like that.
Age 12.
There's another one saying, one of my best friends vaped. I didn't know that she did that.
She asked me to try it, but I didn't vape with her. She's not my friend anymore. Age 14.
We gave kids these cards because we wanted to raise awareness about the marketing tactics used by the tobacco and nicotine industry.
We wanted to provide a platform for youth to discuss the impact of nicotine on their lives.
Educate decision makers about the harmful effects of these products on young people and communities.
And we wanted to offer resources to support young people in overcoming nicotine addiction.
That's a very eye opening. That's really, it's a little heartbreaking hearing those ages and hearing some of that and everything.
But that is a really eye opening and helpful. I imagine for it is for us as adults.
I can only imagine for you and the organization and for you and your peers.
And one of the reasons why this, what the work that you guys are doing is important.
There's a number of things here that we can get into, but I want to stick with a couple of the work that you guys are doing.
And I see that there is a there was a tricks and that treats project.
Can we talk about that a little bit? Who's got that one for us?
So tricks and treats was this Halloween based nicotine tobacco prevention thing.
So what we did is we went out to our cafeteria lunches six through eighth grade. I'm pretty sure.
And we took some Halloween candy and we asked kids a lot of questions, a variety of questions about how tobacco and vaping can be like bad for you or what it can do.
Maybe what kind of ingredients it has in it. And we put out some posters to help spread the awareness.
And kids, whoever answered like inappropriate and healthier response, they got a piece of candy.
Oh, that's awesome. Great job, Shirley.
No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm just teasing you.
But I appreciate that. I appreciate that answer very much.
And I'm just going to completely mess up your guy's name so the whole interview I apologize.
But in part, in part is because I'm very focused on the topic.
And I think it's very important. I will admit I talked about this before in the air.
I never was a cigarette smoker until I got late in life and I started going to bars and my friends were and I started to then.
And I stopped a 15 years ago. I think it was somewhere around there.
And didn't really think much of stopping didn't really think much of what it would do other than to be honest with you.
I didn't like the control it had over me.
And I grew up with a father who had a very serious addiction and didn't want to spend the rest of my life like that.
Learning from his example. So I stopped and so many different things that nobody really told me about opened up.
Food tastes amazing.
Like my taste buds came back like in full force. I like foods. I didn't even know I liked the money that I saved.
Certainly was huge for me. I work in radio. We don't have a lot guys.
I mean, it really helped. And these things were important to me and I started sharing them with friends and they started to do more of this.
And then we see a society go in a direction that to be honest with you when I was your guys this age.
If somebody had told me this, I would have laughed at them. But you walk into most gas stations now when I was a kid, there was hundreds of brands in there.
And every different style and size and color and everything else.
And now that's been brought down to a very small number amount of cigarettes that are in stores.
Still too many for some and I don't disagree with that. But I do think that we you can't get forward without you know appreciating the progress that has been made.
But then with that comes the vaping and as the rise of that and so much of these and we're kind of back in the back where we were with cigarettes.
The idea of back in the 50s and 40s when they were marketing the kids and things like that and now we're back here with vaping.
So the work that you're doing is so important and so key to stopping this and keeping this.
What an adult does is what an adult does. We're not talking about that. We're talking about kids.
And when it comes to people your ages, it is incumbent on us to hear you out on this subject.
I think that we've learned a little bit from this and we need to keep learning that people making decisions that it doesn't affect them.
They need to hear from people that it actually affects. They really do whether we're talking about politicians or our parents or anybody else need to start listening to that stuff.
They're going to hear you when you do things like this organization. When you come together as this because this is not something that you've done out of anything other than a passion for the subject.
And I really admire that. I think that's really noteworthy. I did want to talk a little bit as well about some other things.
And Mia, you had something else that we wanted to touch on. What do you got for us?
Yeah, so at Rams, we are trying to figure out an alternate to suspension kind of program thing.
So in kids that a vapor use different kind of things like that, don't just get suspended.
They actually get support and the help they need to quit vaping and smoking and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
How much does like enter into all this?
Well, it's one of those topics. It's a topic that I imagine can be very, it's tough to begin with.
It's even tough from an adult to an adult to talk to each other about this stuff sometimes. Let alone at that age.
Getting people to open up about things that are close to them that are important or that they might have shame about.
Because that's when I hear you talking about this, one of the first things I think of is the shame that you can have with things.
The idea of some of the stories that you shared with us about some of the testimonials there to this.
They speak to what we're talking about here. And that we don't want that shame to keep people from seeking help or reaching out to a friend or somebody like that.
And that's just on a personal friend level, let alone on the level of our principles or different people in charge.
And I've talked to our superintendent about this. I've talked to a number of principles in the area about this subject.
And how important it is for them, for you guys to know and for students to understand that there is no, they're not looking to get people in trouble.
They're looking to people to stop. That's all. And wanting to make a correction there.
I think that that's a key part of this. And the idea of not punishing people is only going to help.
And statistically, this actually, we see the stats of this. Get more kids to come forward and talk about this and be open about this.
Did you have something else, Mia, you wanted to touch on there?
So like one of the programs we are trying to start is not is taught by trained and certified adults in 10, 15 minute sessions.
It is most effective in small groups format six to 10 participants. The emphasize teamwork.
The easy to use methods help teens quit by addressing total health in order to develop and maintain positive behaviors.
Participants will talk about the importance of physical activity, nutrition, enhancing their sense of self control,
and improving life skills such as stress management, decision making, coping and interpersonal skills.
Additionally, they will learn to identify their reasons for smoking or vaping, healthy alternatives to tobacco use,
and finding people who will support them in their efforts to quit.
Intervention for nicotine dependence, education prevents tobacco and health in depth is new.
Convenient alternatives to suspension or citations that help schools and communities address teens vaping problems in more supportive ways and focuses on punitive measures.
In depth is an interactive program that teaches students about nicotine dependence, establishing healthy alternatives and how to kick the unhealthy addictions that got them into trouble in the first place.
Nicely done, Mia. Nicely done. You got a great voice for this by the way. You got a great voice for radio.
Ladies, I know that you had something else you wanted to add to this.
Yes, so one of the reasons why we do these initiatives and programs is because kids at this age and in this grade level,
they really don't want to be at school. They want to go home and while they're at home, they can still use these nicotine and vaping products.
We really would like to stop that because even if we stop them from doing it at school and we support them to stop,
they can still do it at home and a lot of kids just feel the need to lie about it to teachers and counselors and people like that.
We really want to point out the fact that it's not the kids fault. It might be the guardians fault.
Marketing nowadays, they bring in flavors like cotton candy and different variety of fruits just to lure kids in.
We don't think that's fair to the kids, so we're trying to spread awareness about this and show the marketing that they can't win.
Yeah, well said. Nicely done you guys. Very well done.
I did want to mention going back to the testimonials a little bit that while you had read two of them, there was actually more than that.
Yeah, there were like hundreds of them and we sent a lot of them to the legislators and there were many testimonials.
And we said something about the ages and we said this because we wanted to show that there are people who are being affected by this in a number of age limits.
It's like people from 12 to even 10 year olds like they have to deal with this and high schoolers and that's why fact is not just a middle school.
It's also a high school group now.
Yeah, thank you for that.
And again, thank you for all the stats and the data, the time today and the great work that you guys have put into this one.
As we're getting close to wrapping up, I would like to go down the line because I'm curious of the response from your peers, from your fellow classmates,
how they have responded to this group when they hear you're a part of it or when you talk about it and they'll start with you.
Yeah, so when I tell people in my grade that what fact is about and what we're doing, they're very interested in it and they're very supportive and they would love to help in any way they possibly can.
So I just really like how even though they're not a part of fact, they're still willing to help with the projects that we are trying to pursue.
That's great, that's good to hear.
So when I talk to my friends about it, they're obviously very, they talk about how like they just walk around and they see people smoking and vaping and they don't like it because they don't want to have their health be affected by other people's decisions.
And one of the things that I really felt when I joined fact was well, I may be comfortable with going to the bathroom and walking around my school.
Other people aren't because they're afraid that they'll get caught because they're around someone who's doing this and that they'll get in trouble for something that wasn't their choice.
They're afraid to just go to the bathroom and that isn't something that people are should be dealing with.
I took a little bit of a more negative side because I was in some contact with some pretty defiant people about vaping and really fact just tried to open their eyes about it.
And they saw that when they hide in like the bathrooms or maybe even in the halls, they're affecting other people besides themselves.
It's not only you but if you need help, please get some. That's what we're trying to spread.
And they really open their eyes to it and they really help contribute to the fact that everyone is here, not just them and that they can stop it.
Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you. Very well done. Very well said. You guys have done great in this segment. As we're wrapping up, I actually, if Gretchen, if you wouldn't mind grabbing that microphone, we've had Gretchen sitting here. She's a Ram's advisor and I'm doing a great work with these kids and I appreciate that Gretchen.
If parents of adults out there listening would like to help, would like to be a part of anything, are we able to, are we able to help in any way? Could we just even share the information you guys have?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important for the community to hear the voices of the kids and their testimonials.
If somebody in the community has a student in our school that is struggling with that, they can refer them to the NAT program, which is voluntary.
The in-depth program is obviously the alternate to suspension, so it would be mandatory. We just want to find ways to support kids when they're struggling.
I think the community could help us in supporting the kids, making sure that things are in compliance and they're being mindful of if they use these devices, taking care of them so they don't get in the hands of youth.
Also, if you go to the American Lang Association, there's a lot of resources for adults struggling with nicotine and tobacco addiction as well.
There's a great point. I just threw a curveball at her and she knocked it out nicely. She wasn't even going to talk at this segment and just jumped out and gave us some great stuff. That's really good.
You guys nailed this. Well done. All three of you. Very good work. Almost too good. I need this job. Please don't take my job. Please, I need this work, you guys.
It's really good work. Keep up the great stuff and looking forward to having you guys back because we want to keep up the date with this organization and what's going on with it.
Maybe we'll talk again, come spring or something like that and see how things are developing and going, but thank you very much for the time in informing us old people a little bit more about what's going on in the schools and everything and especially about this great organization.
There's people to find out more not only about this, but keeping a look in all the things going on in our education system in our schools and around here.
Thanks for the time you guys. Nice work. Thank you. We'll be back with more midday magazine right here at 97 5 FM 13 20 AM WFH are locally grown radio.
