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Stop Smoking Before It Starts

The Great American Smokeout is a way to get people talking about the dangers of smoking.  Do our kids know them too?  Pennsylvania officials think itR...

 

The Great American Smokeout is a way to get people talking about the dangers of smoking.  Do our kids know them too?  Pennsylvania officials think it's important to get into school and teach early anti-smoking lessons.

An assembly at West Scranton Intermediate School on Fellows Street was all about smoking, lung cancer, and cigarettes.  It was thanks in part to the PA Department of Health.  Bureau Director Tomas Aguilar has been traveling all over the state, talking to students.  Earlier in the day he was in South Scranton.

"There were probably 200 kids at the middle school this morning. I asked them who was familiar with e-cigarettes, and at least 75% raised their hand," Aguilar told Newswatch 16.

He says it's kids, not parents, who are the driving force when it comes to who will start - and who will continue - to smoke.

"We got our parents to wear seat belts! We bugged them and annoyed them, why aren't you wearing a seat belt? I'm hoping we can do that with cigarettes, asking them, why are you still smoking?"

Doctors point out they don't think parents know how much their actions influence their own kids' health.
"One of the biggest things I see is children of parents, especially when both parents smoke, how often they are in the office for upper and lower respiratory infections, how often they're here for ear infections," said Dr. Anthony Wylie, a family physician at Geisinger's Mt. Pleasant facility.

Dr. Wylie points out that even smoking outside is harmful because of the residue on clothing and skin.  The lesson here: there's no ok place to smoke when young people are around, it's never too late to quit, and there's no easier way to quit than to never start at all.
 

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