Students team up to encourage others to spurn smoking

Flathead High School students are going a step beyond kicking butts, and will be standing up for the truth next week.

Kick Butts Day - sponsored by the national Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids each year to encourage youth to spurn cigarettes and chewing tobacco - is on Wednesday.

In a run-up to the event, Jeff Thompson's Advanced marketing class is carrying out a campaign to open the eyes of their fellow Flathead students to what tobacco opponents consider the deadly lies of the tobacco industry.

They also advocated for passage of House Bill 643, the measure introduced by Rep. Tim Dowell, D-Kalispell, to ban smoking in many businesses as of Oct. 1, and in all businesses, including bars, by 2009.

It passed the Senate on Thursday. Gov. Brian Schweitzer pledged to sign it into law.

In conjunction with an educational outreach by Flathead County Health Promotion Specialist Traci Gulledge, the marketing students are making 90-second commercials, writing letters to legislators and editors, putting up posters and submitting newspaper ads.

"It's a real-life marking experience," Thompson said, just after dispatching students to meet their Monday marketing deadlines.

"We can do as many marketing programs throughout the year as we want, but they're mock. This is real life."

Real life and death, the students say.

A video crew cruised the Flathead High hallways Thursday, asking anyone they met for their first response to thoughts about smoking.

Junior Caleb Murray and senior Kevin Timmons heard "disgusting" at least three times.

"The fact (is) that I'm the one who had to sign the papers to pull the plug on my father-in-law when he died of (tobacco use)," study hall and school suspension monitor Janice Rauthe told them.

"It's bad," junior Kaitlen Wynne said.

Back in the Advanced Marketing classroom, junior Amanda Barker and senior Erica Miller were working on letters to their legislators, radio and TV interview questions and a promotional news article.

They chose from Thompson's list of 11 small group activities he outlined for them - presenting school-wide announcements, typing a Smoke Free Montana fact sheet or devising a script for speaking to younger classes were some other options.

"I felt this would make more impact in the community," Barker said of her letter. "The rest are aimed more at the kids in schools."

Miller was including health facts in her letter. She was stunned to learn such things as 1,400 Montana deaths are attributed annually to smoking, 440,000 in the U.S. Nearly 23 percent of Montana youths use tobacco, among adults, it's nearly 20 percent.

"I don't think a lot of people know," Miller said.

"You're spending money on something that kills you," Barker said.

Senior Noah Palmer calls himself an activist and minces no words when it comes to tobacco.

"I have friends that smoke and they need to quit," he said. "It's disgusting."

He planned to talk with local legislators when they're in town, and let them know that the new law's damper on tobacco's social acceptance is a great move.

"I think tobacco should be illegal," Palmer said. "It'll kill you. You can die from one drop of pure nicotine."

He's thinking about letters to local businesses, which he thinks need to be on the forefront of snuffing out smoking in their establishments, but plans to target most of his energies in school.

Senior Eric Connolly and junior Casey Poier were on the same track as they began editing video for the commercial for which they teamed up with Murray and Thomas. Besides the hallway reactions to smoking, they enacted a scene in which Connolly got slapped after asking a friend to go outside for a smoke.

"The kids will watch this," Connolly said. "They'll see kids they know and pay attention."

How will they show success?

"If it can get only a couple kids to quit," he said.

"Or get the point across that smoking is not cool," Poier added.

Thompson enjoyed watching his own enthusiasm for the project spread to his students as they poured themselves into their assignments.

"It's neat to be able to do something so positive," he said, "and see the students take it and run with it."

Gulledge is pretty excited to see the students' participation, herself.

She heads up the Tobacco Free Flathead coalition. It's funded by the state Department of Public Health and Human Services through the Tobacco Use Prevention Program, out of just over $150 million that Montana had gotten as of late last year from the $206 billion master settlement with the tobacco industry.

A dozen or so coalition members meet monthly with Gulledge to come up with strategies for reducing death and disease from tobacco use.

One of their big emphases is youth, counteracting the tobacco industry's heavy targeting of the same group.

"People don't realize the money spent in Montana by the industry, because they don't see it on TV," Gulledge said of the TV advertising ban brought on with the master settlement. But she pointed to the "huge banners" at Majestic Valley Arena, rodeo events, baseball games and even hometown fairs to advertise tobacco.

"They've become very wily," she said. "It's a powerful lobby."

Counter campaigns are all the more important now, she said, especially those spearheaded by kids.

"A youth-driven campaign is more effective among their peers," Gulledge said. "They know the trend in smoking and tobacco use in their age group. They know what works and catches their attention."

She cites the Truth Campaign based in Florida that drew national attention a few Super Bowls ago with its "Shards of Glass" popsicle commercial.

"That age group gets upset that the tobacco industry is targeting them," she said, with youthfulness, sports and the Marlboro Man's ideology of independence.

To fight back, she's educating a generation of media-savvy students.

"We discuss media literacy," in classroom presentations, she said. They talk about what tobacco companies really are selling to youth.

"They're not just selling tobacco, they're trying to sell sex, independence, rebelliousness, coolness. They know what appeals to children."

In fact, Gulledge said, internal tobacco industry documents plainly outline their intention of marketing to underage children.

"Four-hundred forty-four thousand people in the U.S. die every year from tobacco-related diseases, including second-hand smoke," she quoted statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"When you have that many of your customers dying every year, you have to recruit new, younger ones.

"Their customers are dying. If you didn't think it was evil, what better business to be in than something that is addictive? they are trying to addict people at a young age so their customer base stays the same, and their profit margin stays the same."

The marketing class initiative - in which they're encouraging youth and adults alike to contact lawmakers directly - is a key ingredient in the health department's recipe for success.

"That's why it's important for Jeff Thompson's class to understand how they are being manipulated," Gulledge said. "They have to make it known to their friends and their peers."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com