What is Reality Check?

Reality Check is a youth-led movement against big tobacco companies and their manipulative marketing that appeals to the younger generations.

Our Goals

We aim to expose the manipulative and deceptive marketing tactics of the tobacco industry by producing a change in our communities through grassroots mobilization, and education. Empowering youth across NYS will help them see that they are more than just replacement smokers for the tobacco industry. They can become leaders in their communities

Youth Benefits:

  • Positive Youth Development
  • Community Organizing
  • Leadership skills: public speaking & community service
  • Media development
  • Travel across NYS for regional and statewide Reality Check events.
  • Create a network of peers across NYS
  • Speak to local and state elected effected officials  

Our Approach

Leadership

Engage youth as leaders and activists in the movement against tobacco use and the tobacco industry.

Deceptive marketing

Educate community members and leaders about the manipulative and deceptive marketing tactics of tobacco companies, and mobilize them to take action.

Community actions

Engage community leaders and decision-makers in support of community actions against tobacco and the tobacco industry.

Societal support

Utilize the youth voice to demand societal support to hold the tobacco industry accountable for its actions and to change the social norms that support those actions.

Media

Develop media relationships and work to garner earned media.

Nationally & internationally

Contribute to the advancement and growth of a youth action movement against the tobacco industry locally, statewide, nationally and internationally.

Smoke-free Movies

Teens consume more media than ever, watching an average of almost 11 hours of media in any given day. The media youth consume is often completely unregulated, giving the tobacco industry direct access to teens’ daily lives.

As teens spend more and more time on the web, Big Tobacco spends more and more cash on internet marketing. There are currently no state or federal laws regulating how the tobacco industry markets on the web. This gives the industry free range to target youth in new covert ways through buzz/viral marketing.

With anonymous posting as easy as the click of a mouse, the tobacco industry can easily claim innocence while recruiting new replacement smokers for the 1200 Americans they lose daily to tobacco related illnesses.

Reality Check aims to expose the tobacco industry and de-normalize and de-glamorize tobacco use on screen. 

Interested in becoming part of Reality Check?

Help us create a tobacco-free generation!

Download our Reality Check Brochure here or contact Abigail Clark, Reality Check Coordinator at (585) 484-1503 or abigail.clark@lung.org. You can also visit the Reality Check of New York website at www.realitycheckofny.com to see what action is being taken statewide!

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