COURTESY OF TRU
Monique LaValley, right, and fellow TRU advocate Salina Patel show off just a few of the 5,124 cigarette butts they picked up near the Wake County Human Services building during an advocacy day for the group - whose full name is Tobacco. Reality. Unfiltered. - last month. Monique was named a TRU Star at the event for her work with the organization, which will hold a rally Feb. 16 to persuade the state legislature to provide funding in the next budget.
Not long after Monique LaValley started tagging along with a friend to meetings for TRU - a youth-led effort also known as "Tobacco. Reality. Unfiltered." that aims to stem tobacco use in North Carolina - she found herself in a room full of fifth-graders.
As part of an interactive TRU presentation to the youngsters, she asked, "What percentage of high school students do you think smokes?" The children were instructed to run to designated corners of the room to indicate their answer choice: A) 16 percent, B) 32 percent, C) 70 percent, or D) 90 percent.
"I was given quite a shock," said Monique, 17, of Raleigh. "All of the students ran to the 90 percent. And I just couldn't believe it. And when I asked them, 'Why do you think it's 90 percent?' their response was 'Well, all big kids smoke.'"
Turning around perceptions like that - and the implications those perceptions can have on the choices young people make - is what drives Monique in her work with TRU. And it's why she doesn't want to see the group's funding disappear as lawmakers shape the next state budget.
Originally, TRU was funded by the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, which was set up to guide smoking cessation and prevention efforts, among other things, after the 1998 settlement North Carolina and other states reached with the nation's major tobacco companies. But the state budget passed in 2011 didn't include money for the Health and Wellness Trust Fund. The state's Department of Health and Human Services picked up TRU for 2012, but there's no permanent home for the program after that.
Monique and other student advocates for TRU are hoping to change that as lawmakers hammer out details of the next state budget in the coming months.
They're planning a rally outside the Legislative Building on Feb. 16 to call attention to their cause. About 1,000 youth and adults from TRU and other anti-tobacco groups are expected to attend.
"As the representatives are entering the building, we'll be having our rally outside," Monique said. "So we hope to get the word out to them about this program. Because a lot of legislators did not know, and I feel overlooked it last year, what they were getting rid of when they did this."
She and other advocates are hoping to land some face-to-face meetings with lawmakers to make a more personal plea.
If she gets such a chance, Monique said, "I plan on simply presenting them with the facts. That this money that they do put toward (the TRU program) has its effect."
Examples of such effects can be seen in the 2007 N.C. Youth Tobacco Survey, which found that the rate of smoking among the state's high-school students that year had dropped to 16.7 percent from 27.3 percent in 2003, when the Health and Wellness Trust Fund launched its tobacco prevention programs. The middle-school smoking rate over the same period dropped to 4.3 percent from 9.3 percent.
"In the end," Monique said, "what they put toward this now will create a healthier generation of North Carolina teens."
Hard work on behalf of TRU is nothing new for Monique, a senior at Raleigh Charter High School who started the school's TRU chapter after transferring there because "I just couldn't be without it."
She's now the chapter's president, and she also serves on the Wake County TRU Youth Council and the Teen Health Advisory Board of Wake County.
Last month she was named a TRU Star by the organization at a training and advocacy day attended by fellow TRU members and community leaders.
But it's not awards or fancy titles that keep Monique focused on lobbying lawmakers, educating her peers, and picking up cigarette butts in city parks and playgrounds.
It's the shock of little kids assuming smoking is just part of being a big kid, and the knowledge that there are people like her uncle, who still smokes after losing a leg due to tobacco use, who haven't yet gotten the message.
Seeing her uncle recently, for the first time after losing his leg, "made me feel like all this work that I've done, these are the reasons why I do it," she said. "So that people don't have to feel this pain in the future, and people don't have to go through the idea of losing their family due to tobacco use, due to something that's preventable."
