Where there's smoke

MOSES LAKE — With a few inhales and exhales through a straw after jumping up and down for anywhere from one to three minutes, fifth-grader Bryce Perez at Longview Elementary has an inkling of what it feels like to be a smoker.

The exercise, part of a presentation made by Moses Lake High School students in the Teens Against Tobacco Use program, is one way students are teaching their peers about the effects of tobacco use.

TATU, a program sponsored by the American Lung Association, trains high school students to teach others about the health risks of smoking.

A program that two years ago had hardly any presence within schools in the Moses Lake School District, TATU is beginning to thrive today. A $300 grant the district received from ALA this school year helped to buy supplies for the program.

"They've gotten a lot of education they would not have had," said Sydney Platt, an intervention and prevention specialist with the North Central Education Service District of the training the high school students received.

At the elementary level, it is not as common to hear kids pressuring each other to try tobacco, Perez said, but nonetheless he thinks it is a good idea to have high school students become part of the prevention message.

"Learning how to say 'no,' it could save someone's life," said MLHS sophomore Jeremy Garcia.

The 30-minute presentation consisted of touching a cancer-ridden pig lung, skits and discussing creative advertising techniques that are used in the tobacco industry to reach minors.

Showing students advertisements of cigarette packaging that resemble slot machines, Xbox video games and vacations on the beach, even at fifth-grade, the pressure to smoke is not a subtle message.

"Why do you think they advertise to you guys?" asked Melissa Anderson, a prevention and intervention specialist and tobacco coordinator with the North Central ESD.

Across the room, students shouted answers that painted a disturbing picture of the tobacco industry, saying it doesn't care about people and that reaching out to younger age groups is an advantage to a generation that may not realize what will happen to them if they start smoking.

"Just by hanging around a smoker, your heart can get black," said fifth-grader Taylor Gran.

Another student, Steven Cline, thought the best part of the high school students' presentation were the pig lungs, a tangible example of what tobacco on the lungs looks like; a greasy layer of carcinogen covering the majority of what once was a healthy lung.

When this group of high school students is not presenting, they are learning more about each other and take their message back to the high school where the pressures of being a teenager can often be overwhelming.

"Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't mean you have to," said Garcia. "Just be you."