Seeing the effects of smoking

When discussing smoking with sixth-graders at Newport Elementary School on March 21, Kim Aceves brought a visual aid to depict the effect of tobacco on lungs: a pair of sponges in plastic bags, bound together and connected to a cigarette holder. Aceves put a lighted cigarette in the device, and the sponges showed visible traces of tar.

Then, for good measure, Aceves showed the students a pair of real human lungs.

“This person did not die of smoking,” Aceves said, carrying a dried human lung around Nicolle Kameron’s classroom. “I’ll put it that way. This is a healthy lung.”

Next, Aceves ? the tobacco-use-prevention specialist for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District ? showed the students another lung, heavy and blackened with tar. When a student asked if it was possible to clean a lung, Aceves replied no; that would be as futile as trying to squeeze the butter out of an English muffin.

On Monday and Tuesday of last week, Aceves visited every fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade class at Newport Elementary to talk about the dangers of tobacco ? and the social pressures that often lead to its use. To quiz the students on their knowledge of the subject, Aceves organized a mock game show, titled “You’re in Jeopardy,” featuring questions about smoking.

As classmates volunteered answers, sixth-grader Joey Hartnett read out questions and Jackie Cappellini held up a large colored board with five categories: chemicals, diseases, numbers, anatomy and a generic category called “potpourri.”

Among the questions posed were “What is the name for the brown sticky stuff?” and “Name the disease that affects various parts of the body and starts with C.”

The students, who learn about tobacco as part of their weekly Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, quickly identified the answers as “tar” and “cancer.”

Elsewhere in her presentation, Aceves touched on the media images that encourage nicotine use ? not just movie stars smoking, but also professional athletes who chew tobacco. Some students, who noted that they had already decided not to smoke, said they had learned to see through the propaganda.

“In DARE, they show you magazine ads where people look really happy,” said Hannah Alkire, 12.

“People think if someone’s smoking and they’re a rich actor and happy in life, they should do that too,” added classmate Luke Toohey, 12.

Aceves reminded the class that drug addiction goes beyond an everyday craving. Nicotine, she said, takes only seven seconds to reach the brain, and the body grows to expect it before long.

“There’s no chemicals in French fries that go to your brain,” she said. “If there were, you’d be out growing potatoes in your backyard.”