YES Targets Smoking Among Minority Teens

The American Heart Assn.’s San Diego County chapter is hoping to attract teen-agers to a program designed to reduce smoking among the county’s black, Latino and Asian adolescents.

The program, titled YES (Youth to End Smoking), will take two approaches to reducing the high rates of smoking among 12- to 18-year-olds.

First, murals with anti-smoking messages will be painted by area high school students, who will also contribute slogans and visual ideas to the project. The second phase will be a skills training program to teach children from ages 10 to 14 to resist messages in tobacco ads.