My name is Cristina Cervantes and I am a high school student and member of the Wisconsin Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Prevention FACT group. I am writing this to inform and motivate readers to support tobacco prevention programs. My concerns are about teens using cigarettes and other tobacco products, as I want to help my community by make it a better place for everyone.

My biggest problem with tobacco is seeing how many teens smoke each day, even when it is illegal, and not caring about their health. I have seen many young teens each year that end up on the wrong path. Not supporting our tobacco prevention programs will most definitely increase the number of teens using tobacco. There are many teens out there that seem to really not know the harm of tobacco and not having prevention programs would just make this worse.

Education is the best method to prevent people using tobacco products and it wouldn’t be right to not have education available for our community.

Cristina Cervantes
Clarke Square

My name is Noel Ortiz. I would like to inform you about the effects tobacco has on the teens in my community. I am writing this letter because I believe it is important to maintain tobacco prevention programs, so we can keep on giving our best to make our community a tobacco free environment. I am part of the Wisconsin Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Prevention FACT group, where I have learned that there are a lot of teens in my community that use tobacco.

One of the biggest problems is that now in our community somewhere or somehow the teens manage to get hold of tobacco at a very early age. That is not good at all and I know this because some of my friends have been smoking since the age of 14 and they are now 16. They are not able to quit and that’s a shame, especially for the age that they are. Parents do not want this for their kids. Once I get older and have kids, I would most definitely not want my children to be addicted to tobacco.

I realize this problem because every other day that I see young teens smoking and using many types of tobacco. In fact, I have experienced how teens can have access to different tobacco products when I participated in a project with the Teen Tobacco Committee. We went to several convenience stores and attempted to buy cigarettes and Black n Milds. A couple of stores actually sold us tobacco and didn’t even ask for ID. Knowing that teens can have access to tobacco really devastates me. I am going to keep on trying my best to save my peers and younger teens from smoking and getting lung cancer, or losing their loved ones at an early age.

These are some of the specific reasons that we need your support for tobacco prevention, to keep on educating more teens before they become victims of tobacco.

Noel Ortiz
Clarke Square