Did you KNOW that tobacco use is the most preventable cause of death in the United States? Did you KNOW that tobacco companies target their advertisements to young people—trying to get them hooked now, so they can become their customers later?
Did you KNOW that most young people do not smoke regularly, or even admire those who do? Showing Tobacco: Just Say Know to your students gives them a chance to face the facts, so they can know why to say no.
In this informative middle school video, teen narrators guide younger students through a lively question and answer format that delivers hard facts about tobacco: the drug nicotine addicts you, while the tar and other chemicals and toxins in cigarettes—arsenic, cadmium, formaldehyde, etc.—kill you.
They stress that the deadly diseases caused by smoking—cancer, emphysema, and heart disease—may not be so far away in the “distant future.” Public Health expert Dr. Deborah Coleman-Wallace describes specific health effects: the process of addiction, the development of tolerance, and the miserable symptoms of withdrawal. Tobacco use affects your immune system.
Damaged cells can grow into tumors and cause damage to your organs—that’s cancer. In a compassionate but firm voice, Dr. Coleman-Wallace warns that although smoking begins innocently, it is soon no longer a choice. You’re hooked! It is widely known that the vast majority of people starting to smoke are young—smoking is a pediatric epidemic in our country.
Tobacco companies make smoking look glamorous, stylish, cool...grown-up. The wicked truth is that tobacco companies are adding extra nicotine—the highly addictive drug found in all forms of tobacco—to cigarettes to get young people hooked, quickly.
High school students advise: don’t let these corporations steal your health, your money, your time, and reasoning, especially when you should be gaining more control over your own life.
In a special Just Say Know closing section, high school students inspire healthy behavior, supporting the choice to stay away from tobacco. One student sums it up: “Smoking is NOT cool.”
