By Kathy Chaffin
Salisbury Post
If you want to smoke, go ahead.
Soon you’ll be in a hospital bed.
It’s bad for your body.
If you smoke, you’ll have nobody.
ó Dakota Ellis, student
LANDIS ó Seventh-graders at Corriher-Lipe Middle School wrote their own anti-tobacco rap songs as part of their health class Tuesday.
It was difficult to hear what any of them were saying for all the creative brainstorming going on.
But when it came time to perform the raps for their peers, the students seemed to lose their voices. The message got out nonetheless: Not only is tobacco not cool, it’s really, really bad for your health.
And just in case the classes didn’t get the message from the rap songs ó performed to the music of vocalist Fergie’s “Glamorous” ó high schoolers Lamonte Bell and Rashawn Joshua read the components of cigarettes.
The seventh-graders grimaced as they listened to the list, which included arsenic (also known as rat poison), formaldehyde (used for preserving dead organs), picolines (horse urine) and skatole (feces).
Bell and Joshua are among 12 members of the Youth-In- Action Against Tobacco Council, which goes around to schools in the county making anti-tobacco presentations. Natalie Gray, youth tobacco prevention manager for the Rowan County Health Department, sets up the presentations and accompanies them to the schools.
Gray said Youth-In-Action Against Tobacco members are trained by “Question Why,” a youth empowerment group in Charlotte.
Statistics indicate that on any given day, 4,000 youths under the age of 18 try their first cigarette, and 1,500 become new regular smokers. This equals 545,000 new smokers each year.
In 2006, roughly 423,260 youths became new smokers. Of those, it is estimated that 135,443 will die prematurely.
Youths using spit tobacco are also at risk. Anyone who uses eight to 10 dips/chews a day receives the same amount of nicotine as someone who smokes 30 to 40 cigarettes a day.
For more youth tobacco statistics, log onto Realityunfiltered.com.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249 or kchaffin@salisburypost.com.