Escape the Vape, Youth Summit held at Chesapeake College

WYE MILLS — On a rainy Saturday, approximately 35 students from area schools gathered at Chesapeake College for an event called Escape the Vape, a youth summit. The kids ranged in age from sixth grade to high school, and chose to participate in an event designed to empower youth to embrace a vape-free and smoke-free lifestyle. Those attending came from Dorchester, Kent, Talbot and Queen Anne’s counties. As an added benefit, QA provided free transportation to the event to make it accessible to all who wanted to attend. Many of the youth who attended were accompanied by at least one parent.

The program was spearheaded by Dorine Fasset, Queen Anne’s County Department of Health, Prevention Services and her colleague Anna Ashley. In addition to the Dept. of Health, this event had support from Citizens Against Smoking Tobacco (C.A.S.T.) Coalition and Chesapeake College Office of Student Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. The program is made available through a grant from Kent County Health Department and Maryland Department of Health.

According to the latest available data from the 2021-2022 school year, over one in four high school students within the five-county Mid-Shore region are current tobacco users. This epidemic is largely driven by the use of electronic smoking devices, e-cigs, or vapes , which have been heavily marketed to teens.

The summit featured rap and dance performances aimed at promoting a passion for healthy choices and encouraging young people to reject harmful habits. Special guest Sterlen Barr, CEO of Rapping About Prevention, hoped to inspire attendees with his message of positivity and resilience.

Dr. LaMarr Shields of Baltimore’s Cambio Group led the morning session with his son Mosiah by his side, providing the message in a format which engages his audiences and helps the theme hit home. An inspirational speaker, educator, thought-leader, author, and artist, Shields creates with purpose in all aspects of his professional and personal life using the common thread of Ubuntu philosophy: a person is a person through other people.

An Open Society Institute Fellow and a former faculty member at Johns Hopkins School of Education, Shields is co-founder and senior director of education and innovation at the Cambio Group. Shields dedicates his life to inspiring adults and youth alike to pursue a higher purpose, achieve sustainable value for long-term success, and cope with adversity in order to create opportunities in their personal, professional, and spiritual lives.

Further inspiration was provided through the music and dance of Barr, aka NoPuffDaddy, delivering a high-energy performance using facts, humor, personal experience, teamwork exercises, and audience participation. Rapping About Prevention teaches the importance of maintaining a positive, drug-free, safe, healthy and active lifestyle all while having an amazing and memorable experience.

Barr’s own journey began in Philly over 30 years ago when he lost his grandmother to lung cancer. He began writing and rapping as a way to work through his grief, and hopes to help prevent other families from feeling the same pain. A lifetime athlete and former boxer, Barr’s presentation style is high energy on purpose — and it too draws the students to the message. Presented to students in middle and high schools across the country, he reaches thousands each year with his work. He says, “ Kids don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care!”

Shields shared, “We are addicted almost at birth to sugar and salt — it’s one of the reasons kids say they vape — because it tastes good.” Shields has spent a lifetime understanding the reasons people and especially our kids get hooked on these substances so easily. These summits are one of the ways he says we can combat it — through understanding and providing a message that reaches the kids. Watching the response as he walked his audience through his presentation made it clear the message was hitting the mark.

High school student Wyatt Tolker attending the session with his mom Kerieanne Hinerman, Dorchester County’s Tobacco Program Coordinator, was inspired to write verse in response to one of the exercises. Speaking after the session with Tolker, he relayed the thought process behind his inspiration, “I’ve always written stuff — I have a notebook full of things I’ve written. When Dr. Shields asked us to write down our responses, I knew I wanted to present a message that would appeal and speak to the other kids in the room, regardless of their age!”.