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Teens On Front Lines In Fight Against Smoking

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 11, 2008

Ask a roomful of health advocates, cancer specialists and policy wonks the best way to attack the dangers of cigarette smoking, and they'll all suggest the same weapon: teenagers.

That's exactly what happened at a recent medical and policy symposium on smoking, held at the Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. Hours of lectures about the best-known legal carcinogen came down to the realization that kids may best reduce the numbers of Americans smoking in the future.

Adults spout off the awful statistics about smoking all the time. Cigarette smoking is linked to an estimated 400,000 deaths a year. Eighty-eight Floridians a day die of tobacco-related illness..

Still, an estimated 3,000 children start smoking in our country every day. And these rookie smokers aren't likely to be swayed by some grownup telling them smoking will kill them. When you're 13 or 14, getting lung cancer at 50 is too abstract a thought, says Tom Brandon, Moffitt's director of Tobacco Research and Intervention.

"They don't care about the health risks … it's all old age to them," he says.

That's why the experts praise teen-based anti-tobacco campaigns such as truth and Students Working Against Tobacco. In Florida, most have ties to the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, who sued the tobacco industry for its medical and financial impact on Floridians. SWAT, a direct outcome of the lawsuit, today includes 17 chapters in Hillsborough County middle and high schools.

"I know I tune out my parents," says Le'Nery Ortiz, an active member of Memorial Middle School's SWAT team. "If you have someone your own age telling you something [about smoking] you might listen."

These programs and the teens supporting them don't spout health statistics. Instead it's about big business exploiting teens with advertising that appears to promote cigarettes as cool, rebellious and sexy. The students attack the issue in school, at home and online.

In all arenas, SWAT avoids the preachy attitude parents like me might instinctively take. They clearly target teens, and differ even from DARE, the popular tobacco, alcohol and drug program used in most elementary schools.

In fact, most of the teen-driven anti-tobacco Web sites are edgy and use blunt language. Ready-to-download posters, games and videos state the brutal facts about tobacco-related illness and death. It's anything but a lecture from the school nurse.

"As soon as I put posters up in the cafeteria, people started crowding around," Antonio Brooks, president of Memorial Middle School's SWAT team, says of a recent anti-smoking campaign at the school.

For example, materials on the state SWAT Web site include public service videos. One, "Melting Moms," shows elaborate ice sculptures of women on a busy city sidewalk. As the ice sculptures melt, baby dolls inside fall from the mothers onto a dirty sidewalk. The message: "Over 30 children a day lose their moms to tobacco."

"Students don't want to hear a health message," says Laurie Ellston, Hillsborough County's SWAT coordinator. "When they find out they're being manipulated to, that they are being lied to, they get angry."

Want to share your health and fitness idea? Contact me at (813) 259-7365 or mshedden@tampatrib.com.

Curious about teen anti-smoking campaigns? Try these links:

www.gen-swat.com

www.thetruth.com

www.whatareyousmoking.org

www.hcswat.org

www.tobaccofreekids.org

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