By Grace Da Roch, Las Vegas Sun

May 3, 2026- Jeana Kim remembers the day her friend’s father died from health complications tied to years of smoking. Watching someone her own age carry that grief shook her to the core.

That friend was on Kim’s mind last week as she and a handful of fellow high school students stationed themselves on the College of Southern Nevada’s West Charleston campus, distributing flyers and collecting signatures in support of smoke-free policies.

Kim is among the founding members of the Southern Nevada Health District’s SPARK (Students Promoting Awareness, Responsibility and Knowledge) Youth Advisory Council — and the group has set its sights on making CSN smoke-free.

“The high schools in Nevada have a huge problem with tobacco, so I thought it would be a very good opportunity for us to reverse the smoking situation and make it smoke free,” Kim said. “With events like these, it’s amazing to see how people actually change and realize the dangers of tobacco and the uses of it, and they’re actually able to quit. That we could actually make a difference in our (Clark County School District) community … I’m just happy to be part of the work.”

The advisory council, launched last year, brings together students ages 14 to 17 from diverse backgrounds to share their perspectives on public health issues while developing leadership and advocacy skills.

Staff from the Southern Nevada Health District, including health educators like Cassandra Meraz, collaborate with the student cohorts on projects and teach them about different issues affecting the community. They hold 13 meetings — eight in the fall and five in the spring — to discuss these topics and plan outreach events, such as the one Tuesday at CSN.

About 10 students were accepted into the first cohort, which began meeting in the fall, said Crystal Montgomery, a public health educator who helped establish the program. After some conversations with health district staff, the team decided to work with the Tobacco Control program and set their sights on encouraging CSN to go tobacco free.

CSN is the last of the “big 3” institutions to adopt tobacco-free policies, Meraz said. Both UNLV and Nevada State have already done so.

UNLV became a smoke-free campus Aug. 15, 2022, banning all forms of tobacco and any nicotine delivery device that has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cessation. This includes e-cigarettes and vape pens, which the university says “promote and/or perpetuate nicotine addiction, and thus for many people may lead (or lead back) to cigarette use.”

Marijuana and cannabis in all forms, as well as smokeless tobacco like chews, are also prohibited for everyone on campus — regardless of whether they’re a student, staffer or just visiting.

Exceptions are made for cultural and religious practices that use tobacco as well as the possible need to conduct research on tobacco or tobacco products. In these cases, tobacco burning must be approved by the UNLV Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost prior to the event.

Nevada State University adopted 100% tobacco-free campus policies in the fall, after leadership approved the move in January.

“Creating tobacco-free environments on college campuses is one of the most effective ways to protect young adults at a pivotal stage in their lives,” Dr. Cassius Lockett, district health officer for the SNHD, said in a statement. “By fostering healthier spaces today, we’re helping to prevent lifelong addiction and building a stronger, healthier community for the future.”

The 2025 Southern Nevada Community Health Assessment found that about 15% of adults in Clark County smoked cigarettes in 2023, higher than both the state and national averages but a decrease from years prior.

In 2021, the most recent year of data, 34% of teens in Clark County said they had used vaping products, with almost 13% using an e-cigarette for nicotine and almost 16% for cannabis, according to data from the SNHD’s Healthy Southern Nevada dashboard.

Smoking harms almost every organ of the body and can lead to various diseases, with more than 16 million Americans living with a smoking-related illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause more than 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S.

Juliana Gonzales, a 17-year-old from Legacy High School, said she had noticed a lack of education and outreach on the dangers of tobacco use within schools on the east side, leading many of her classmates to grow up not fully realizing the risks. It’s part of why she became passionate about this project, she said.

Gonzales hopes the advisory council’s work will “be a very, very strong factor in pushing this policy forward for the betterment of the students and everyone.”

Meraz noted that vaping rates “have actually decreased a little bit” in high school students recently, but now the health district is seeing more middle-school students taking up the habit. In addition to existing youth vaping prevention programs, the health district is working to help create a pipeline where students can go from tobacco-free middle and high schools to smoke-free universities.

By keeping them in environments where they aren’t around tobacco or nicotine products, they’re less likely to experiment with them and increase their risk of serious health complications.

The health district has already entered conversations with CSN leadership, Meraz said, but still wants to gain more student support to show executives. Those conversations will continue into the summer and fall, if needed, she added.

That momentum could be fueled by students like Brayden Boulter, a 19-year-old freshman at CSN and former nicotine user. Boulter said he had recently quit vaping after using nicotine products for a few years.

He felt ashamed while using the product because his friends didn’t smoke, experienced bouts of depression and even had to give up some of his hobbies like hiking after realizing he couldn’t breathe as well as he used to.

Boulter, who is running for CSN student body president, said he wants to bring this issue up with leadership if he gets elected and do more outreach across CSN’s three campuses on the dangers of tobacco and nicotine use.

“A lot of vaping happens by peer pressure and by seeing other people do it, and I think if we have people do it less, more people are less likely to get into vaping, too, and I think it’s good to know that there’s resources and that there is a light at the end of a tunnel,” Boulter said. “I would love to bring this more to students across all three campuses. I would say my college experience has gotten a lot better since quitting, so I would love to share that testimony with other students and give them the opportunity.”