Let me be perfectly clear:
Smoking will kill you

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes a brief but serious discussion of why you should avoid cigarettes.
A senior citizen who has lung cancer sent me this booklet called Raising kids who don’t smoke, written by Philip Morris USA. He wanted me to write a column about the dangers of smoking, and he hopes it will make kids change their minds the next time they see a cigarette.
This was a long pamphlet, so I went through it and took out the things I felt were the most important. Philip Morris relied on multiple sources, including government agencies, in compiling the pamphlet. According to the brochure, almost 20 percent of high school students admitted they smoked a cigarette before age 13. The younger people are when they start smoking, the more likely they are to develop a long-term addiction.
Teens and pre-teens are more susceptible to respiratory illness, and smokers experience shortness of breath more often than non-smokers and may have impaired lung growth and function.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and in most cases that are caused by cigarette smoking. Smoking is a major cause of heart disease, emphysema and stroke and increases the risk of oral cancer and gum disease.
In my opinion, the main point of this pamphlet is to let parents and guardians know that they should talk to their kids about the dangers of smoking. The pamphlet mentions why good conversation on why smoking is not good for your health could be discussed during a game of sports, because smoking can affect athletic ability. It also notes that children who are passengers in cars are a "captive audience" of smokers.
I thought of this: When you see a small kid who is smoking with friends in the mall, you can mention to him the things he could have bought with the money he used to buy the cigarettes.
As for peer pressure, pre-teens and teens like to have influence over clothes, music, etc. However, the article clearly states when it comes to important issues such as values and whether they smoke, parents have more influences than peers. It also states that kids might not look like they are listening, but they really are listening closely and watching what you do as they try to figure out where they fit into the world.
The pamphlet also offered this advice:
• Resistance to peer pressure can be learned by practicing how to respond to the many situations you are confronted with every day.
• Recognize that simply telling kids to "just say no" might not always work.
• Prepare kids to deal with pressures by discussing the types of situations they could have. You can role play. An example would be to ask your kids what would they say if their best friend offered them a cigarette.
• Encourage kids to get involved in after-school activities where they can practice social skills and find new friends who do not smoke.
If you need to be scared into not smoking, don’t forget about the information I wrote on the Franklin Institute’s Body Worlds exhibit. It was in my Nov. 24, 2005 column:
According to an exhibit display, tar and soot particles from cigarette smoke form deposits in the pulmonary tissue, causing it to appear increasingly black. Just 20 cigarettes a day means that 150 milliliters of tar per year (about 5 fluid ounces, the volume of a coffee cup) will be deposited in the lungs and can shorten the life of the individual by an average of five years.
The exhibit included a lung with cancerous growths. According to the exhibit, if a tumor has invaded the vascular system, individual cells can break away from the primary tumor and be dispersed through the body via the blood. They become stuck in the capillary network as a trap and a filter, and from there can produce secondary tumors (metastases). Metastases from other tumors often settle in the lungs because of the extensive capillary network found there.
There was also a cross-section of a thoracic cavity from an individual who had lung cancer. One of the dangers of long-term smoking is the development of bronchial carcinomas (lung cancer). They occur 20 times more often in smokers and they are the most common form of cancer and cancer deaths in men.
For more information or to get a copy of the pamphlet, go to Philip Morris’ Web site at www.philipmorrisusa.com or call 1-800-768-7297.

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William Feldman is an eighth-grade student at the Joseph J. Greenberg Elementary School. Send all e-mails to wmkidscolumn@aol.com