transcript: SWAT Presentation in Florida video
Male Student: As an Oklahoma SWAT youth, I really feel empowered mainly because of the attitudes of the adults. They really let us operate as independent individuals and take SWAT and drive it and lead it where we want it to go rather than just being puppets for their agenda. And it really helps things run. One personal experience of mine was at the Youth Access Demonstration that we held. It wasn’t an “A” list celebrity thing, but the youth really got involved and excited about it and I think it reached its full potential with just the youth. And I think that’s really something we could do. We don’t need a big name to tout our cause. We’re enough. And we can do it ourselves.
Video: shows protestors with signs.
Female Student: We had three state wide initiatives for Oklahoma. 24/7, Youth Access and the Clean Indoor Air Act. Youth Access is just making sure that teens cannot get a hold of tobacco, the Clean Indoor Act is self-explanatory it talks about how we don’t want smoke inside buildings. And then 24/7 is for schools. We don’t want smoking at schools allowed at all. We are just going into schools and trying to get people to adopt it to make sure like students or staff cannot smoke.
Video: shows skateboarding.
Female Student: We went to the Reality Ex Jam. Matt Hoffman was there and there were people skating and there were lots of ramps and a lot of bands were playing. And it was a lot of fun and a lot of people showed up like a couple of thousand. And we were able to get the word out about tobacco and we really attracted the alternative crowd and the punk crowd because we had a lot of bands there that we could relate to and so they came and also they got to see SWAT and what we did.
Video: Realty Ex Jam
Female Student: The thing about Youth Access is that we go into convenience stores and we give them reward reminder visits. And what we do is that we go in and we go to the sales clerk and we ask to buy cigarettes or any kind of tobacco product. And we check to see if they ask us for our age or id. And in all the places that we went to it was positive and nobody just sold us tobacco without asking for an id. If they failed to ask us for an id or for age, then we gave them a packet that talks about how it’s illegal and how they can get fined. And if they do ask for id, then we give them a packet that says congratulations and it’s just a personal reward for the clerk. And we can do this anytime, anywhere because it’s free. And we can just go in and check to see if they will ever sell us tobacco.
Video: Shows bicycle on ramp and crowd watching.
Female Student: Another fun and easy thing to do is to have a sit n. And that’s where you get a lot of SWAT members and even people that aren’t SWAT members. And you go into a restaurant that has a smoking area and then you fill up all the seats. And that way no one in the restaurant can smoke and you can eliminate that second-hand smoke. And you can get media attention and call all the news stations and they can bring cameras and it really calls attention to the SWAT program and what we are trying to do and what we are trying to say by doing this.
Female Student: And there is a definite correlation with SWAT and the rates that smoking has dropped by 5% in middle schools and 10% in high schools. And this shows that SWAT is really becoming effective and it’s teaching kids not to smoke. And how it’s so harmful to your body and it harms not even yourself but people around you from second hand smoke.
Male student: People are usually surprised by what we can get done just as youth. We try to be really efficient. We stretch our resources. I think we really make the best use of what we’ve got.