Snuffing the puffs

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

In a shocking show of hands some 40 years after warning labels were first posted on cigarette packs, a majority of kindergartners and first-graders at Edwin Forrest Elementary School said they have relatives that smoke.
During an anti-smoking program at the school last week, the girls and boys told Sterlen Barr, also known as No Puff Daddy, that their moms, dads, grandmoms, pop-pops, brothers and an Uncle John all smoked.
Forrest nurse Pamela Goldenberg invited the health educator and motivational rap artist to the school after he performed for school district nurses in September. The Forrest Home and School Association sponsored the program.
"I really liked the message," Goldenberg said.
Barr, who lives in the Philmont Heights section of Somerton, presented three age-appropriate presentations for the 855 students at the Mayfair school.
"It’s important to get them to never start. They’re never too young to start teaching. We have some fun and educate," Barr said.
His little brother started smoking when he was just 8 years old, just a year older than some of the students in the auditorium. The younger Barr would pick up his father’s lighted cigarette when their father would leave the room, take a puff and run.
His smoking eventually led to him smoking marijuana and doing other drugs. Today he’s serving time in jail for robbing a store, which his brother said was an offshoot of doing drugs — which he began after he started smoking.
No Puff Daddy rapped his brother’s story to them, which was punctuated by the students’ responses of "smoke free" and "don’t smoke."
Though the children’s family members may smoke, Barr, who also lost his grandmother to lung cancer and emphysema, assured them that people who smoke are not bad people.
"It’s the cigarettes and other tobacco products that are bad," he told the boys and girls. "Many, many adults have quit smoking for the love of their children and grandchildren. Go home, give them a big hug and kiss and ask them to quit smoking."
Barr also quantified the impact smoking has for the children.
Tobacco takes 450,000 lives every year.
"That’s like two jumbo jets crashing every day for a year," he said.
Someone smoking two packs of cigarettes a day could save $2,920 each year if he just quits. The money could be better spent on a vacation to Disney World, a cruise to the Bahamas, 200 CDs, or 580 movie tickets.
Barr also listed the chemicals found in cigarettes, including tar, butane, bleach, ant and roach spray, arsenic, naphthalene (moth balls) and carbon monoxide.
"Why smoke a cigarette? We should go out and lick the ground," he said.
Barr’s cousins Rashaun Williams and Demetrius Horton, elicited lots of "eeews" from the audience when they carried posters up the auditorium’s center aisle with pictures of cancer-ravaged lungs and one with an illustration of what a woman’s face would look like if the damage done to her lungs showed on her face.
The cousins drew lots of applause, however, when the two performed expert dance moves on stage.
"It’s important to do things we like, that’s fun, that we enjoy, but do things that are positive," Barr said.
Lasandra Beckwith, 7, and Alyssa Lamberson, 6, both thought No Puff Daddy’s show was cool.
Yasmine Mezoury, 7, got the anti-smoking message loud and clear. She was going to go home to tell some of her family members to "stop smoking so they can’t die."
Six-year-old Rodney Bowman echoed Yasmine’s sentiments.
"You can die by killing your lungs with ashes and pass away really fast and be dead for ten thousand years," Rodney said. ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com