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From: Joel Sent: 5/12/2003 2:29 PM
Today I did a program for 110 sixth graders. There were many questions both during and after the program from kids concerned about their parents smoking. One of the students father had just suffered a heart attack within the past few weeks and was in the process of quitting. I encouraged the group to refer their parents to www.whyquit.com as well as their siblings and other people they encounter.
I pointed out we try to cover issues at www.whyquit.com that are pertinent to people who smoke and want to quit, as well as providing materials for people who smoke and may still need a little extra motivation as to why they should quit, as well as for kids who do not smoke yet and want to reinforce their resolve to stay smoke free.
These kids are at the age where they are facing a huge amount of peer pressure to smoke and they need to have solid reasons if they are going to resist this kind of pressure. I am bringing up a few posts that are pertinent to them, and in the event that they do pass along the site to their parents and other adults, I am bringing up materials for these people also.
Joel

I went back to the same school mentioned above and did a presentation to probably another 110-120 sixth graders. While the group was made up of different kids with slightly different stories, the basic issues talked about above are the same. Actually, this is the 24th year in a row that I have talked to this school. I suspect I have students in this group who are children of students I talked to many years ago.

As always when I am doing school groups, I like to pop up a few extra posts that are directly addressing the concerns of young people, hopefully before they ever find themselves trapped into years of addiction. If any of our regular members have posts that they think will help influence these kids, today would be a good day to bring them up. Hopefully we can help some young people to never take up smoking, and in the event that there were some who have already started with experimentation, we will be able to help influence them to commit now to never take another puff!

Joel