ZMCHD Awards First Anti-Vaping Scholarship

ZANESVILLE, Ohio– The Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department held its first-ever anti-vaping scholarship contest, and one 11th grader at Mid-East made history as the first scholarship winner.

It started as a class project, but Josie Swartz’s anti-vaping video is now headed straight to Zanesville movie theaters, and it just earned her a $5,000 scholarship. Josie’s call to action? She wants her peers to take the risks of vaping more seriously.

“I think a lot of people kind of joke around with the topic and they don’t take it seriously, so the whole purpose of my advertisement was for it to not be viewed as a joke, but for it to be very serious and for people to be able to truly understand the side effects,” Swartz said.

Josie and her video stood out in the Zanesville-Muskingum County Public Health contest, which awarded more than $10,000 in scholarships.

The first-place winner received $5,000; second place, $3,000; third place, $1,500; and fourth place, $750.

“I hope that my advertisement will teach a lot of people more about nicotine and I’m going to be spending 10% of my money that I received for the truth, initiative foundation and hopefully that’ll go towards more vaping research,” Swartz continued.

Gen Z was once expected to be the generation that would end nicotine use. Many grew up with anti-smoking pledges and programs like D.A.R.E., but vaping entered the conversation through a different door. Now, instead of quitting, Gen Z and younger generations are being targeted in new ways.

“You would’ve thought they would’ve been the ones especially seeing grandparents, brother ‘s sisters parents ending up with different diseases lung issues from smoking and vaping but the way that big tobacco companies are advertising things nowadays they’re actually targeting youth.”

With flavors like cotton candy, pink lemonade, and packaging that looks like video games, Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department Health Educator Julia Zalmanek says the tactics are no accident.

“It’s mind-boggling on how they advertise things with different flavors with different looks like now they have games and I’m just like it needs to all go away,” Zalmanek said.

She believes Gen Z has the power to flip the script — if enough students speak up.