TURNING AWAY FROM TOBACCO

With hands pinching shut their noses, 38 5th graders at Walden School in
Deerfield breathed quietly through the straws sticking out of their mouths.
Thirty seconds later after jumping up and down in front of their chairs,
the youngsters put the straws in their mouths once again, held their noses
and tried to breathe. Air wheezed out of the straws with each of the
pupils' labored breaths.

"What did that feel like?" Dr. Matthew Plofsky asked the pupils once they
were sitting down.

"The straw seemed to be extremely narrow," said one pupil. "My legs felt
like Jell-O," said another.

"If you smoked your entire life, your lungs wouldn't take as much air in
and that's what it would be like--breathing through a straw," Plofsky said.
"That's what chronic lung disease feels like."

The breathing exercise is one of many ways Plofsky, a Deerfield family
practice physician, gets students to talk about tobacco use.

This is the first year Plofsky has taken the American Academy of Family
Practitioners' Tar Wars curriculum to area schools. He has presented his
program at three other Deerfield schools and hopes to reach all 5th graders
in the Deerfield and Bannockburn schools with his anti-smoking message this
spring.

"It's an ideal age," Plofsky said, explaining why the program targets
5th-grade pupils who are usually 10 or 11 years old. "They're old enough
for it to sink in and most of them haven't started (smoking) yet or seen
the peer pressure. You can really affect their decision making before some
of these decisions are made for them."

Children know smoking can cause cancer, but it is important to recognize
the short-term effects of smoking such as yellowed teeth and increased risk
of asthma, Plofsky explained.

In frank discussions with the Walden pupils, Plofsky had them estimate the
percentage of smokers in a variety of age groups, catalog the positive
effects of not smoking and analyze cigarette and chewing tobacco ads to see
what messages the ads send.

Caitlin Hebble, 10, and Elizabeth Canavan, 11, pored over a two-page Camel
ad depicting a calm clean-cut smoker amid a crowd of gluttonous sports fans.

"Yuck," Caitlin said as she stared at the brightly colored picture
featuring an overweight man, his shirt covered with spilled hot dogs and a
man in a bird costume being toppled by the crowd.

She and four classmates tried to determine who would be attracted to
smoking by looking at the advertisement. "Maybe adults and some teenagers,"
Caitlin suggested skeptically. The pupils decided the ad meant that if you
smoked, you would be relaxed and healthy even when surrounded by crazed fans.

But with Plofsky's assistance the two 5th-grade classes listed items the
smoking advertisements didn't show: lighters, smoky rooms, ashtrays,
wrinkles or yellow teeth. Instead the ads promoted great taste and a
healthy image.

The 5th graders completed the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program taught first
semester by area police officers and though they learned a lot about
illegal drugs, the children didn't spend as much time talking about the
effects of smoking.

"This is different because we're not talking about a lot of different
subjects," said 11-year-old Jenna Ward.

While the Walden pupils felt confident they would not bow to peer pressure
when it came to smoking, many admitted the battle might be difficult.

"We will be tempted, but we won't (do it)," Caitlin declared. She thought
some friends would begin smoking and try to influence her.

Even if they give in to the initial pressure, most of the pupils think the
bad taste of tobacco would discourage them from picking up the habit.

"I tried it once and it tasted terrible," said one 11-year-old girl who
smoked a cigarette last summer. "We had to eat a whole box of breath mints,
it was so bad."