Audio clip
Karen Glenn
On Wednesday, Chattanooga high schoolers plan to kick back against cigarette advertisements that target youth as part of national “Kick Butts” Day.
Organized by the student-based group Students Taking A Right Stand, the event will give about 25 Hamilton County high school students a chance to fire off soccer balls at a goal covered with paper advertisements for tobacco products, planners said.
“It’s just a symbolic message to the tobacco industry to quit targeting kids,” said Jay Collum, tobacco cessation coordinator for the Chattanooga Hamilton-County Health Department.
The event kicks off around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday on the lawn in front of Cold Stone Creamery near the waterfront.
The nonprofit group, also called STARS, encourages healthy choices such as avoiding alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and violence, said Karen Glenn, the program’s executive director.
In February STARS launched a media literacy curriculum in five area middle schools to help students better understand marketing strategies employed by advertisers, Ms. Glenn said.
She described a magazine cigarette ad that featured an Apple iPod next to a pack of cigarettes.
“Obviously, that’s not targeting a 40-year-old,” she said. “That’s just one example of subtle messages placed in magazines to try to encourage younger people” to smoke.
This year’s event is part of a nationwide campaign that will involve about 2,000 participants across the nation, health department officials said.
In Hamilton County, about 27 percent of youths are current smokers, and while adult smoking rates are on the decline, youth smoking rates are holding steady, Mr. Collum said.
“Adolescents feel indestructible,” he said. “They appear not to be taking the health consequences as seriously as we would hope, or as (seriously as) adults do.”
Ms. Glenn said young people often don’t realize how easily they can become addicted to tobacco.
“There’s not one student that has ever picked up a cigarette thinking they would be a lifelong addict,” she said. “It’s important for us to get the message to them early, when they’re more likely to be immature and make poor choices.”
In terms of addictive qualities, nicotine is on par with crack cocaine, said Dr. Vincent Viscomi, pulmonologist and president of the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Medical Society.
Taking up smoking at a young age comes with long-term risks in addition to the physical damage done to sinuses and the increased risk of asthma and bronchitis, Dr. Viscomi said.
“It starts dependency issues,” he said. “When they come to quit, if they do try to, they end up thinking, ‘What can I transfer my dependency to?’”
Dr. Viscomi said smoking-related conditions put an enormous burden on the health care system, but most insurance companies don’t cover smoking cessation medications, such as the nicotine patch or prescription medicine Chantix.
“It kind of drives us all crazy,” he said.
This year’s event comes on the heels of the passage of the Non-Smoker’s Protection Act, effective October 2007, Mr. Collum said. The law made smoking illegal in most enclosed public places in Tennessee, with some exceptions such as bars that serve only people 21 and older.
“We’ve got a little momentum going, and we certainly want to keep that going in the right direction,” he said.
KICK THE HABIT
For information about Tobacco Free Tennessee or other local resources for quitting support, call the local Tobacco QuitLine at (423) 209-8008.
Health care reporter Emily Bregel has worked at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since July 2006. She previously covered banking and wrote for the Life section. Emily, a native of Baltimore, Md., earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Columbia University. She received a first-place award for feature writing from the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists’ Golden Press Card Contest for a 2009 article about a boy with a congenital heart defect. She ...
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