ORDER-2020-85 : A Resolution Honoring the Melrose Chapter of the 84 Movement--Fighting Youth Tobacco Use in Massachusetts

Transcript (~15 min @ 3:59)

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▶ 3:41 Speaker 1: sure councillor Jamaleddine sorry yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor Migliorelli yes president Grigoraitis yes chair eccles yes five yes

▶ 4:00 Jack Eccles: Okay. The first item on tonight's agenda is order 2020-85, a resolution honoring the Melrose chapter of the 84 movement fighting youth tobacco use in Massachusetts. I will go ahead and read the resolution and then there will be an order for the suspension of the rules as we have some members of the 84 movement and the administration here with us tonight. So, So, whereas 2,800 youth in Massachusetts become daily smokers each year, whereas 15 million packs of cigarettes are smoked by youth each year, whereas there has been an increase in sale and marketing of flavored tobacco and vape products that has triggered an increase in youth tobacco use, whereas the 84 Movement is a Massachusetts-based statewide advocacy group fighting youth tobacco use in Massachusetts, the 84 in their name represents the 84 percent massachusetts youth who did not smoke at the movement's inception whereas the melrose chapter of the 84 movement consists of the following melrose high school students ambert amber chow emily chow celine shiva eminem isaac cushman mackenzie donovan sabrina gardner mary kate mahoney bridget mccarran molin mosqueda judal noel bridget bric brady pitcher lena fan ruby robichow Ruth Sands, Sophia Totino, Caitlin Regan, Janice Tang, Matthew Whalen, and Sani Yu. Whereas the Melrose Chapter of the 84 Movement was a finalist selected from the close to 100 chapters statewide for the 84 Movement's Secure Outreach Award due to their outstanding work to prevent youth tobacco use in Melrose over the past year. Whereas the 84 Movement's advisor Bob Severino has been an advocate for youth tobacco use prevention in our community for years and was nominated for the 84 Movement's Adult Advisor award be it resolved that we the Melrose City Council recognize and applaud these achievements in that this resolution signed by each member and the mayor be spread upon the permanent records of the city of Melrose and be it further resolved that a special copy be presented to all on this fourth day of

▶ 6:07 Jack Eccles: May in the year 2020. Seeing that is there a motion to suspend the rules to hear from our members?

▶ 6:12 Speaker 3: Motion to suspend the rules. Seconded.

▶ 6:20 Speaker 1: madam clerk please call the roll councillor Jamaleddine yes councilman mcmaster yes council mcnaught yes council Migliorelli yes president Grigoraitis yes chair eccles yes five yes uh the mayor is in queue i would like to bring him into the

▶ 6:41 Jack Eccles: panelists to speak to the order yes and i believe we have janice who's a student who'll be joining us as well okay you should be coming in

▶ 6:57 Paul Brodeur: momentarily. Am I up? Mayor Broder, can you hear us? I can. Okay. I can't see me, but that's probably for the best. I'll speak very briefly. I've been involved in the anti-tobacco movement and the youth smoking prevention movement for a long time, starting out on the City Council. And I just want to say a couple of things. I want to thank Mr. Savarino for all his work over the years that I know is going to continue into the future. And also to recognize both the students who are before you right now and their predecessors, because I can tell you from past experience and from what I know now, there are two things about this that are really important. Peer-to-peer education is the most effective thing you can do to stop kids from starting smoking, from starting tobacco use and from getting addicted. The other thing I can tell you is that youth advocacy is an extraordinary tool. And I can tell you, as someone who was up on Beacon Hill when it happened, that without the 84 movement and without the activism of the youth who came back to the statehouse and back to the statehouse and back to the statehouse, we would not have the e-cigarette restrictions and the flavor ban that is a critical piece in making sure kids don't get hooked on this stuff. So I just wanted to say thank you and congratulations. Keep up the good work.

▶ 8:24 Jack Eccles: We could probably hear from Health Director Clay, who's also with us today.

▶ 8:29 Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I want to reiterate Mayor Broder's comment about how youth-to-youth education is absolutely the most effective and how proud I am of this group as well as their predecessors. I've had the privilege of joining the youth group, small amounts, as we've gone to Washington over the years. We've met with Senator Brown, Senator Markey, Senator Warren. And the kids are just, they're so eloquent and so professional. I wish you could be there to see how well they represent the city. It's really a pleasure. Mr. Saab has done an outstanding job keeping the youth group going, not only on tobacco but with substance use in general. We've been doing this now for almost 20 years in Melrose and we've been able to transition from a federally supported program to a Melrose supported program, which is really, really important. So I want to congratulate Mr. Sav and the kids on being nominated for this fantastic award.

▶ 9:54 Speaker 4: Mr. Savarino.

▶ 9:56 Speaker 5: Sure. Thank you, Ruth. And thank you, Mayor Broder and the council for the recognition on behalf of the Youth Action Team. We really appreciate it. We have been very fortunate to have a great group of dedicated students who show up very early in the morning before school. And they're there for a cause. They're there to learn about substance abuse prevention and to learn what they can do about it. And the peer-to-peer education piece is huge. The advocacy piece is huge. The peer mentoring, the peer education, the leadership skills they develop. In working with the 84 program, We've been very lucky. They've been very supportive. They've provided us with some great opportunities, some opportunities to earn some stipends. And one of the things that I'm most happy about, we worked on a couple of projects that the 84 sponsored that paid us some substantial amount of money. And our group decided to donate that money to Jeff Bolduc, who is a guidance counselor who helps me with the Youth Action Team. And Jeff took it upon himself to develop a relationship with a care and assistance dog, support dog for the high school. And Tinker is an honorary member of the Youth Action Team, and she has become a Red Raider superstar. And Jeff had to raise a substantial amount of money to be able to bring her into the school. And I'm just very happy that we were able to, through the 84, raise some money to help him do that. And I think that's one of the best things that we've done. We've done some peer education in the sixth grade. We've done some information sessions in the high school. vaping obviously has become the thing and the offshoots of vaping as the industry evolves so we continue to work on that the legislative advocacy as a matter of fact our group met with virtually with the wakefield youth action team this afternoon and we are combining efforts to deal with our state legislators to provide them with some additional information. So the work is ongoing. As I said, the vaping tobacco industry is evolving and we have to continue to evolve with them to try to stay at least a half a step ahead of them in terms of providing information to the peers, for our students to provide information to their peers. so thank you again appreciate it appreciate the recognition from the 84. i think they're very kind to the old guy this year um and but it's much appreciated thank you awesome i think we have one

▶ 13:06 Jack Eccles: more one of the students joining us as well um we do i'm making our panelists now i believe it's

▶ 13:15 Speaker 5: janice janice with us yes one of the members of our group senior member who is on the statewide leadership team of the 84 movement so she has had a leadership position in the at the state level one of 12 or 14 students in the state to help run the 84 movements she can tell you a little bit

▶ 13:39 Speaker 3: more about that um yeah so the 84 it's called the 84 because when we started in 2007 there were 84 of students that didn't smoke and then now the number is up to 94% and it's basically I wouldn't say it's like because of our work but like we focus on kind of educating the youth about the dangers of smoking and vaping or just more vaping now and every year we have two events one is the youth power summit where we primarily focus on just educating students about like certain like our main theme of the year this year or no last year it was on menthol and like kind of racial profiling from the tobacco and vaping companies and so we kind of educate the students um from each chapters about that and then they bring the information they learn back to their cities and towns and then they teach their peers about it and then the second event we usually do is called kick-butt say and that's when we talk to legislators about well we're not like lobbying to them but like we're educating them about certain things that's happening in our city and towns and then kind of hoping that they will pass certain laws but we're not like asking them to yeah thank you very much

▶ 15:09 Jack Eccles: are there any counselors wishing to speak counselor not Thank You mr.

▶ 15:16 Jeff McNaught: chairman I echo the mayor Brodora sentiments and director Clay's sentiments and want to congratulate the 84 director clay mr. Savarino and thank you for being here tonight with us to Janice and thank you for all of your hard work I just wanted to mention that I think that there is a fair amount of us on this council who have had mr. Savarino as an educator in the Monroe school system. What's that? Thanks, Jeff. Well, I say this all as a compliment to say that you've always been there as a great source of support. Always a great example of what the right thing to do is. That's the way I always remember you. And obviously that continues on. I would also say that when I was in high school, smoking could have been much closer to 94% in the opposite direction. uh i exaggerate a little bit but there was there was smoking allowed outside at morris high school so to see how far you've come uh and how far you brought the class uh or the high school that been 94 percent non-smoking and working towards this goal is extremely impressive um and i couldn't be happier to be a co-sponsor of this resolution so thank you thank you

▶ 16:43 Christopher Cinella: council snow as a non-voting member um but i just want to chime in and echo uh everything that council mcnaught just said you know as your favorite past student appreciate you know the efforts so thank you and thank you uh director clay as well councillor

▶ 17:05 Cory Thomas: thomas again i i'm not a voting member on this committee but i did want to say uh thank you to director clay uh kathy guevara for all her work with the um prevention uh coalition and obviously mr severino for all his years of dedication um you're doing so much to help our students if there's anything that you need from the city council or the city of melrose that we can assist you with moving forward through the end of the school year and into next school year please feel free to reach out you know i'd be happy to have conversations with you guys offline um and see what we can do to help out it's a great program you guys run there and you know the more students we get involved the more students we can reach at the high school and hopefully the middle school level as well so thank you all congratulations thank you seeing no one

▶ 17:51 Jack Eccles: else um i would like to also thank mr severino and janice and health director clay for joining us tonight and all you've done i also had mr severino's vice vice principal um just a few short years ago so thank you very much everyone for joining us um are there any motions at this

▶ 18:18 Speaker 4: time chair would entertain a motion I believe the correct motion is to place

▶ 18:20 Jeff McNaught: this resolution on file to place it on file there's a motion to place this

▶ 18:30 Jack Eccles: resolution on file made by councillor McNaught seconded by councillor Migliorelli madam clerk will you please call the roll

▶ 18:42 Speaker 1: councillor Jamaleddine yes McMaster yes councillor McNaught yes councillor Migliorelli Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chair Eccles? Yes.

▶ 18:56 Jack Eccles: Thank you, everyone, tonight for joining us. We will move further into the HEW agenda for