The Power of Change

Special to the Pioneer Times
By Louise Latvis
    On April 30 and May 1, three Maine Youth Voices students from East Grand School went to the fifth annual Maine Youth Anti-Tobacco Summit in Augusta.
    The Summit was organized by MYAN, Maine Youth Action Network, a network that believes that each person can make a difference. The goals for the workshop were “to learn, brainstorm, and create plans to take action to … STOP tobacco companies’ lies and manipulation, QUIT and/or support others who want to quit smoking, RESIST the pressure and help your peers resist, too,” and “make good choices that impact your future and the people around you.”
    The Partnership For A Tobacco-Free Maine (PTM), whose aim is “to reduce tobacco-related death and disability in Maine by creating an environment supportive of a tobacco-free lifestyle”, sponsored this event.
Contributed photo
SMOKING WORKSHOP — Students from East Grand High School in Danforth attended a workshop in Augusta on the hazards of smoking. Pictured from left seated, Ben Latvis, Mitchell Bartlett and Sharlene Maynard. Standing is Louise Latvis, Health Ways site coordinator.
    Many other school groups around Maine attended this Summit. The site prevention coordinator for the HealthWays grant, Louise Latvis, along with three East Grand School students, Mitchell Bartlett, Benjamin Latvis, and Sharlene Maynard chose three workshops to attend. They also had time to make a plan to bring back to their school to create change.
    The keynote presentation was done by Rick Stoddard, a gentleman who has had to deal with smoking consequences within his own family. He is an inspirational speaker who talks about how smoking harms people and how the tobacco companies encourage kids to start smoking at an early age by placing cigarette advertisements on stores at eye level with kids and sometimes reimbursing stores if cigarettes are stolen.
    As cigarette companies lose customers through deaths, they continually try to get younger people started. With over 4,000 identified chemicals in cigarette smoke, the addictive chemicals make smokers want to continue. The earlier the companies can get a person hooked, the longer these people will continue to support the companies. This speaker gave students a clear idea of the effects of smoking, not only on the health level, but also on the emotional level of losing someone. This speaker was very motivating.
    The first workshop, Scene Smoking, was on Thursday night. The speaker, Michelle Ross, who works for the PTM, showed short clips of movies to show how prominent smoking is in many movies, some even PG-13. The main idea behind this workshop was that we should not be letting tobacco companies advertise their products to students. As an adult, I tend to tune out many of these ideas, but teenagers are more easily influenced by what is shown. They are getting the message that smoking is acceptable. We have to wake up to the fact that 14 percent (10,000) of Maine high school students smoke, with 1,600 kids becoming new smokers each day.
    The first workshop Mitchell went to was “Addiction Nonfiction: Sharing Stories and Solutions,” given by Carl Lakari with project AWARE.
    Mitchell wrote: “This workshop was about the principles and power of addiction. We talked about natural highs, which are things that people love to do. After that, we got into groups of two and moved the other person into any position. A couple of random people did improve on different situations. After that, we talked about the different types of addiction. We got into groups, picking a certain drug subject. My group talked about characteristics of towns known for drugs. We had to do a skit or talk about our discussion to the whole class. We talked about how we can change our schools. This workshop was awesome. It was my favorite out of all three. It was interesting and went by really fast.”
    Benjamin wrote about his first and third workshops. His first workshop was “Media Messaging” presented by Ellsworth High School Student Health Awareness Group” (SHAG).
    He wrote: “Program three was about finding the hidden meanings in ads used by the tobacco companies and how you can help prevent and counter them. We started by just refreshing our memories with some negative facts and splitting into groups. Each group was handed a tobacco ad to look over, then write down the ad’s message.”
    His third workshop was “Write Out Loud,” presented by Judy Kelsh and Carie Schelfhaudt with C. D. & M. Communications. This program “was all about advocacy. We saw skits, shows, and songs used to make people more aware about the dangers of tobacco. Media (shows), artistic (song), and flash (skits) were the main styles of advocacy. At the end, we split into groups of three to make our own form of anti-tobacco advocacy. I enjoyed all three of my workshop, especially the keynote presenter.”
    For the final part of this workshop, our students met and decided what we could do to make our school more aware of the harmful effects of smoking and the advertising that is being used to manipulate our students.
    Some of our ideas included making posters, bulletin boards, talking to store owners and making commercials. We recognized that we would have a lot of support from our school, small businesses in our town, our families and anti-tobacco groups. We would use a survey to find out if our efforts were helping to makes students more aware of the harm smoking could do. With an idea of the effectiveness of our plan, we could move forward next year with more students resisting the pressures to smoke and helping others change towards a more healthful life.