Timberlane students embrace Great American Smokeout

From the Eagle-Tribune;

Timberlane students embrace Great American Smokeout Timberlane students help classmates stop smoking
By Margo Sullivan
margosullivan@eagletribune.com

PLAISTOW, N.H. — Don't try to say you don't know about tomorrow's Great American Smokeout if you're a student at Timberlane Regional High School.

You can't turn a corner inside the school without seeing a neon-colored poster, according to 17-year-old Ashley Gillan, a senior in the Peer Outreach group. The posters announce that 75 percent of your classmates don't smoke, and if you do, here's help.

This is the Great American Smokeout "in your face," she said yesterday.

Ashley and about two dozen other students plan to adopt a smoker for the day. They will sit outside the cafeteria from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and offer students who want to quit a one-day contract to sign pledging not to smoke.

Ashley also will carry a supply of "quit bags" to help ease the nicotine craving. For the Great American Smokeout, the Timberlane students stuffed dozens of plastic bags with lollipops, Tootsie Rolls, Jolly Ranchers and gum with the hope the candy would help their classmates quit smoking.

And for people who respond to more dramatic appeals, a set of pig lungs — one healthy lung and one with a tumor — will be on display to show the damage smoking can do to the human body.

"You can even touch the tumor," teacher Tim Lena said.

Rich Cran, a tobacco specialist with the state's Department of Health and Human Services, said he buys the lungs from a mail-order company that provides supplies for smoking cessation groups. The pigs are already dead when the tumors are simulated, and the lungs are subjected to smoke to represent 18 years of a cigarette habit.

"No pig was harmed for this Smokeout," Ashley said.

About two dozen students have spent the past two weeks preparing for the Smokeout — observed nationwide since 1977 — and said smoking is still a problem.

Although fewer high school students light up today compared with the number of teenage smokers six years ago, some cling to the notion that smoking is cool, Cran said. He believes prevention programs such as the Smokeout do work.

"They show more kids are not smoking than are smoking," he said. Asked how many students smoke out of 10, teens will answer six or seven. The reality is two or three, he said.

The latest data shows New Hampshire is winning the battle against teen smoking, said Michael Dumond, chief for the Bureau of Prevention Services at the state Health Department. Between 2001 and 2007, for example, the percentage of seventh-graders who smoke dropped from 8.4 percent to 3.5 percent, he said.

Most of the other age groups, between the seventh and 12th grades, showed similar successes. Seven years ago, 25 percent of all high school students smoked. In 2007, that figure fell to 16.8 percent. Asked why, Dumond cites several reasons, including education, police enforcement and price increases due to cigarette taxes.

"We're going in a good direction, generally speaking," he said, "but we still feel it could be brought down further."

Overall, 19 percent of New Hampshire youths smoke compared with 20 percent nationwide. But although New Hampshire is doing slightly better than the national average, other states outshine the Granite State.

Maine, for example, has brought its percentage of youth smoking down to 14 percent.

Cigarettes are still popular with high school students, Ashley said.

After school, teens are lighting up and smoking cigarettes on streets near the high school, according to Megan Truche, 16, of Sandown. Megan, a junior at Timberlane, said she runs into people smoking outside all the time and most are teens.

"I can't go anywhere without someone blowing smoke in my face," she said.