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Regular Session, 2014 ENROLLED
SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTI ON NO. 12
BY SENATOR GALLOT AND REPRESENTATI VE HOFFMANN
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTI ON
To designate March 19, 2014, as "Kick Butts Day 2014" in Louisiana.
WHEREAS, "Kick Butts Day" is a day of activism that empowers youth to stand out,
speak up, and seize control against tobacco use at more than one thousand events planned
across the United States and around the world; and
WHEREAS, everyday, more than three thousand young boys and girls under the age
of eighteen try smoking for the first time, and seven hundred become new, regular daily
smokers; and
WHEREAS, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United
States killing more than four hundred thousand people every year; and
WHEREAS, "Kick Butts Day" allows America's youth the opportunity to raise
awareness about the tobacco problem, encourage peers to be tobacco-free, and support
effective solutions to reduce tobacco use; and
WHEREAS, research studies have found that kids are three times as sensitive to
tobacco advertising than adults and are more likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette
marketing than by peer pressure; and
WHEREAS, a third of underage experimentation with smoking is attributable to
tobacco company advertising and promotion; and
WHEREAS, in Louisiana, more than six percent of middle school students are
current smokers, along with twenty-four percent of high school students; and
WHEREAS, in Louisiana, nearly fifteen million packs of cigarettes are purchased
and smoked by underage youth each year; and
WHEREAS, approximately one hundred nine thousand youth smokers in Louisiana
will die prematurely from smoking-related diseases unless current trends are reversed; and
WHEREAS, smoking kills more than four hundred eighty thousand Americans each
year, representing more deaths from AIDS, alcohol, automobile accidents, murders, suicides,
drugs, and fires combined; and SCR NO. 12 ENROLLED
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WHEREAS, most of these deaths could be prevented; and
WHEREAS, the children of Louisiana will no longer tolerate the tobacco company's
efforts to manipulate them into buying lethal and addictive products through insidious
advertising campaigns and marketing practices; and
WHEREAS, the residents of Louisiana are encouraged to stand up with the children
of Louisiana in opposition to the sale, advertising, and marketing of tobacco products to
children.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby
designate March 19, 2014, as "Kick Butts Day 2014" in Louisiana.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES