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GOALS
We want you to see what we see in our hospital patients every day from the use of tobacco so you can make an informed decision whether or not to smoke.
We want you to actually witness the suffering and early death from mouth, throat and lung cancer, emphysema and heart attacks and to understand how the tar in tobacco causes these diseases.
We want you to know that the chances of these diseases happening to you, if you choose to smoke, are at least 1 in 3. (1 in 2 for regular smokers).
We want you to know how tobacco very seriously harms your body, not just later as an older adult, but right now while you are still a teenager or pre-teenager.
We want you to know that nicotine in tobacco gradually makes you need more and more of it to produce the same effect. This is called tolerance which leads most kids, who start smoking only occasionally, into becoming regular smokers.
We want you to know that most teenagers who smoke regularly are already addicted and want to quit, but can’t. When they try to quit they feel sick and irritable. These are called withdrawal symptoms. Nicotine addiction can occur after smoking only 100 cigarettes (five packs).
We want you to know that the great majority of today’s teenagers are not smokers and never will be.
We want you to know not just why but also how to resist peer pressure to smoke.
We want you to know how big tobacco tries to manipulate you through ads and promotions to buy their product even though they’ve known for over forty years that it’s highly addictive and lethal. This makes us mad and that’s why our program is called "They’re Rich, You’re Dead".
Finally, we want to recruit you as teachers who convince others to be tobacco-free and to give you the teaching tools to do it.
Toward this end, we leave two interactive CD-ROM’s and three videos (the ones you’ll see) with the school TRUST counselor. These can be borrowed or copied, and then used by you or class teachers for school or community service.
Most importantly, we want to answer your questions.
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