Activities Ideas

Article in School Newspaper

Objective: To get your school newspaper to print feature article on teens and tobacco.  This is a beginning step in raising the awareness of students and teachers of the perils of tobacco. 

Instructions: Contact the editor of the school newspaper (or perhaps a student reporter) and ask them to consider writing a feature article on teens and tobacco.  Student reporters are often looking for story ideas.  Provide the reporter and/or editor with up-to-date facts (and perhaps direct them to visit StepUpNC.com) and information about any plans your school has for upcoming activities. Encourage the writers to do some research, and to interview people such as the school nurse, school counselor, and superintendent.

To spark the student reporter and editor's interest, consider sharing the following:

• Three-thousand teens start smoking every day.
• Nine out of 10 teens who try cigarettes will become addicted to them.
• Ninety percent of adult smokers started smoking before age 18; fifty percent began smoking by age 14.
• In North Carolina, 1,000 people die each year from tobacco-related illnesses - that's 210 per week, or 30 per day!
• If you smoke a pack of Marlboros every day, you spend over $1000 a year on cigarettes.