Save Your Money (and your life)
Let's see, new rims or rotten lungs...
Has anyone ever told you smoking is just a social habit?
Ask Khoa Ma, a 19-year old high-school senior in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"I have friends that smoke, and we're all really into our cars," he says. "They tell me that starting smoking was their choice, and that they don't think they were manipulated."
Khoa tries to tell them about better ways they could spend their money, like getting new rims for their cars.
Just a social habit?
Just a Social Habit?
"We have learned that tobacco can never be just a social activity," say teenagers from Washington and Franklin Pierce High Schools in Washington state.
They belong to one of the American Lung Association's youth programs, Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U.).
They have data to support that statement, adding that "the nicotine in the cigarettes, and the additives such as ammonia, combine to cause, create, and increase cravings and dependence."
Cheryl McDonald, senior tobacco control coordinator for the American Lung Association of Washington, backs them up, saying that "new research shows that teenagers may start to feel an addiction after as few as three to four cigarettes."
How about chewing tobacco?
McDonald says "kids who chew tobacco can start having withdrawal effects in as little as 20 to 30 minutes!"
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He says "it might have been their choice to start smoking, but yet they keep doing it. After a while it's not really a choice anymore."
Don't be a marketing tool!
Tobacco companies target young people.
"Tobacco companies target young people while they're in their rebel years," says Diane Laughter (pronounced "law-ter"), tobacco program manager for the American Lung Association (ALA) of Oregon.
ALA Pays Attention to Teenagers
The American Lung Association (ALA) runs two big nationwide programs for teenagers:
T.A.T.U. (Teens Against Tobacco Use), targets youth ages 8 to 12. The ALA says that most kids start experimenting with 'chew' at 10 years old and with tobacco at around 12.
N-O-T (Not On Tobacco) helps teenagers between the ages of 14 and 19. ALA says these are the vulnerable years when teenagers are very concerned about:
- Popularity;
- Sexual appeal;
- Being cool;
- Not gaining weight.
Check out your state's ALA website to see if there's a program near you.
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She says tobacco companies tell young people that "smoking will make them mature and sexy."
Laughter says that teenagers think smoking is a rebellious act, but "they're just lining the pockets of huge tobacco corporations that are manipulating them."
Four who aren't fooled
Read on to meet four teenage activists in the anti-tobacco movement who know what's going on...
True or False: The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home, has a driveway in the shape of a guitar.
Click Andrew's head for the answer.
TRUE: His home in Nashville, Tennessee has a guitar shaped driveway and is now a museum still furnished the way it was in 1836 during Jackson's retirement.
contributed by
Katya
Madison, WI
04/04/08
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