YOUTH ACTIVISM Rebels with a cause

Ohio youths persuaded lawmakers not to cut funds for an anti-smoking campaign.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- As fog and dusk descend on Pacific beaches nearby, 15 teenagers in clogs and T-shirts scurry into the warmly lighted city council chambers next to the town green.
Snagging the first three rows of plush seats, they hoist their message on placards: "Don't let smoking knock you out."
Eight-foot-high Plexiglas tubes filled with 13,000 cigarette butts gathered from nearby beaches tower over their heads.
One steps up to an open microphone: "We have come to explain how important a beach smoking ban would be to our community," said Ellie Erpenbeck, a 17-year-old senior at Newport Harbor High School.
The teenagers cite statistics on health and environmental costs while handing a stack of signed petitions to the row of suit-and-tie councilmen ensconced behind an elevated oak rostrum.
Where sneaking a smoke in school restrooms or behind the family garage used to be a rite of rebellious adolescence, a growing number of teens are targeting smoking, along with other social issues, as a way to effect change for the better in their communities.
Other issues
With 75 percent of young people disapproving of smoking one or more packs a day, the anti-tobacco issue heads a long list of issues that social researchers say is igniting activism among teens.
Among them: air pollution, forest clear-cutting, pesticide use, drunken driving, teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse.
Fed by their own moral outrage that grown-ups have dropped the ball, and that real-life policy-making is not only an opportunity but a duty, teenagers are making a difference.
"There has been a resurgence of high school activism and advocacy across a wide avenue of issues coast to coast," said Christine Kelley, a political scientist at William Paterson University in New Jersey and author of a book on social movements.
"More and more teens are trying to end the image of youth as complacent and unengaged. They want the world to know they are a force to be reckoned with."
Most recently, that reckoning has come to California beach communities.
Taking the lead
In March, 10 years after California set a national precedent by banning smoking in restaurants, the city of Solana Beach became the first California town to ban smoking at the beach -- creating a wave of national and local interest that has led to similar laws in Santa Monica, San Clemente and Los Angeles.
Behind the charge: a group of teens -- the Youth Tobacco Prevention Corps -- who began lobbying three coastal cities more than two years ago.
"Teens have been taking the lead on this issue and been successful where adults have failed," said Jim Walker, director of Stop Tobacco Abuse of Minors Pronto (STAMP).
Erpenbeck, munching on pizza with friends outside city hall, said her back yard has become an ashtray, and she wants to do something about it.
For its part, Philip Morris USA does not think banning smoking on the beaches addresses the issue of littering.
"We actually have an anti-litter message on each cigarette package and encourage increasing the number of ashtrays on beaches and other outdoor locales," said Jennifer Golisch, spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA.
In the past, teens might have balked at challenging organizations like Philip Morris for fear of being labeled a goody-two-shoes.
"We don't get too many people frowning at what we do," said Erpenbeck, president of her high school chapter of Earth Resource Foundation. "I don't really know many peers who smoke, but in any case, we don't care what these people think. We've grown beyond that in our club."
What's behind this
Some observers say this shrug against traditional peer pressure is largely the result of 15 years of "service learning" that became the rage of school curriculums beginning in the late 1980s.
"The research is very strong that when American schools began adopting curriculum requirements that kids go into the world and learn by doing, that that has had a lasting effect on activism," said Stephen Medvic, assistant professor of government and Franklin & amp; Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
Along with service learning that accompanied the national push for recycling in the '70s and '80s, Medvic and others say the fallout is reflected in the growth of several national organizations such as Mobilize American Youth, Rock the Vote and Youth Vote Coalition.
"More and more kids got involved in cleaning up neighborhoods, drugs, gangs, homelessness, which had an even bigger spillover among kids who weren't even taking the classes," said Medvic.
Because many states won millions of dollars in tobacco settlements in 1998, anti-tobacco activism has become one of the higher profile teen issues, observers say.
Success in Ohio
The state of Ohio, for instance, has a four-year, $50 million campaign -- called "stand" -- which, since November, has burgeoned from nine to 55 chapters as youths mount their own anti-tobacco ad campaigns.
Last week, when state lawmakers introduced an amendment to cut their funding, youths from across the state marched to the Statehouse with placards and signs. They made speeches, held press conferences and testified in legislative committee, helping to kill the amendment.
"It was awesome. I was so nervous," said Sarah Cooper, an 18-year-old from north of Dayton who testified. She joined the "stand" campaign because both her parents, who she feels are endangering their own health, are smokers.
& quot;I think 'stand' can do a lot to help offset the millions that tobacco companies pour into the state every week to get others to smoke."