PHS exhibit warns of tobacco’s dangers

Pig lungs and jars of brown gunk with floating cigarette butts are pretty disgusting, But that’s the general idea of the exhibit, held Wednesday at Pittsburg High School in advance of the Great American Smokeout today.
The idea of the exhibit is to show how yucky tobacco use is so that young people won’t even start smoking or chewing it.
“We just gross them out,” Lisa Schwob, PHS school nurse, said. “That works best at the high school age.”“We are invited to do this at the schools, but we have different materials for different ages,” Debra Anthony of the Crawford County Health Department said. “We wouldn’t take the pig lungs into the grade schools because that isn’t age-appropriate. We do a lot of educating at the middle school levels. That’s a really good age to target smoking prevention.”
Assisting her was Jordan Patterson, junior, who is a peer educator with Straight Talk. Anthony is Straight Talk coordinator.
“I talk to the kids about sex, drugs and alcohol, and try to be a good role model,”  Patterson said.
“I think the kids to listen more to their peers than they do to the teachers,” Schwob said. “It’s great to have the peer education kids on board.”
Representatives were also present from Mt. Carmel Regional Cancer Center with information on the negative effects of smokeless tobacco. Though it’s popular with many teens as an alternative to smoking, it is a leading cause of oral cancer, along with gum disease and tooth loss.
The “Hall of Shame” highlighted other results from tobacco use, including lung cancer and emphysema.
Patterson also pointed out the cosmetic effects of tobacco to the kids. 
“If you smoke or  chew, your breath will smell bad and you’ll probably end up with dentures,” she warned.
Smoking also leads to premature face wrinkles, Patterson added.
“If you’re beautiful when you start, you won’t be beautiful very long,” she said.
Some teens may think they’re just experimenting with tobacco and can quit whenever they want, but Anthony said that it’s not that easy.
“Nicotine is so powerful that some people just try it once and are addicted,” she said.
Anthony, Patterson and the other educators urged PHS students not to start smoking, to stop if they are using any form of tobacco and to spread the message to other smokers they know.
Garett Gebhardt, PHS sophomore, took some of the anti-tobacco information from the exhibit. He said that he does not smoke, but knows many who do.
Anthony suggested he try to get family and friends to stop smoking in observance of the Great American Smokeout.
“I always do that anyway,” Gebhardt said.