File:Youth and Tobacco Town Hall Meeting 6601 (7415656828).jpg

June 14, 2012; The Surgeon General addresses the youth and tobacco town hall in Seattle, Washington. The overarching themes of the meeting were tobacco use prevention, enhancing existing efforts and devising new strategies to help youth and young people resist pressure to initiate tobacco use, or to end tobacco use if it has already begun.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in partnership with state and local public health authorities and tobacco prevention professionals throughout the Pacific Northwest, held a Youth and Tobacco Town Hall Meeting on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington.

The town hall was part of the broader HHS effort to prevent children from starting to use tobacco and to help current tobacco users quit. Three top U.S. health leaders, public health professionals, tobacco use prevention specialists, educators, advocates, policy makers and-—importantly—young people from around the Pacific Northwest attended the meeting. The goals of the event were to share information, tools, and best practices in tobacco use prevention, to enhance existing efforts and to devise new strategies to help youth and young people resist social and industry pressure to initiate tobacco use, or to end tobacco use if it has already begun.

For more information, go to blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/tag/youth-tobacco-town-hall/