FAIRFIELD, CT — In an effort to persuade students to avoid the dangers of vaping, the Fairfield Health Department and Fairfield CARES have teamed up to launch a series of five anti-vape videos created by local students.
The first of the “Don’t Start Now” videos was posted on Monday, and stars Notre Dame High School of Fairfield student and basketball player Pedro Espada. In it, Espada discusses trying to play hoops with vaping keeping him up at night and sapping his energy when the game is on the line.
“What if I don’t have the energy, because of this bad habit that I could have broken if I put my mind to it?” Espada says in the video. “My vaping habit influences every play of the game, not just that last play. I wish I’d never started. Don’t start now.”
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Click here to view the 45-second clip.
Espada came up with the concept for the video, which he told Fairfield Board of Health members on Monday he thought of, because he wanted to impress upon his peers that such bad habits can have consequences.
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According to Santina Jaronko, Assistant Director of Health for Community Health, the videos were shot by local video producer Alex Vishno of A2V Media with a $5,000 grant from the Connecticut Department of Public Health. In addition to Notre Dame Fairfield, students from Fairfield Ludlowe, Fairfield Warde and Fairfield Prep also created videos, which will debut on Mondays on the health department’s website and social media profiles.
“What’s better to reach teens than teens themselves,” Jaronko told Patch.
Another video stars Warde student Scarlett Aguele, who mocks the fruit-flavored vapes that some people are into. In it, she goes into a hall bathroom in school and finds a bunch of students smoking real fruit, and she calls them out for how ridiculous it looks.
“The overall process of making the video was really fun,” Aguele said.
Cathy Hazlett, Program Director of the Fairfield CARES Community Coalition, said that she learned some valuable lessons while working with the students on the videos.
“A lot of teens vape for a sense of connection,” Hazlett said. “What we hope to help them with is finding positive relationships that do not include vaping and peer pressure.”
She added that the students came up with the tagline “Don’t Start Now,” which really impressed her.
“I thought that was really great, because we want to reach younger students to stop them from even trying it,” Hazlett said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost all E-cigarettes or “vapes” contain nicotine which is addictive and found in other tobacco products, making them unsafe to use.
Youths and young adults are particularly vulnerable to the health risks from vaping, and in the 2021 Fairfield CARES’ student survey, 7 percent of a sample of Fairfield’s high school students had vaped nicotine in the last 30 days.
Officials believe that the actual percentage could be higher.
“We encourage all of our community members to view these videos on our social media and to share them, so we can further inform the dangers of vaping,” Jaronko said.
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