Riverbank teens give ‘decoy’ cigarettes with love, anti-tobacco message

Teens here slipped a little advice into the cigarette packs of friends and loved ones, hoping to start a conversation about how to kick the habit. Adelante High leadership students came up with the slightly sneaky plan as their take on the Great American Smokeout.

At an assembly last week, each of the continuation high school’s 66 students got a class-made cigarette-size roll of paper with this message: “Stop smoking, the world will be a better place with you in it.” The phony smokes came in an envelope directing students to slip them into a pack used by someone they were hoping to convince to quit.

The pranklike project appealed to senior Jesus Trevino. “Sneaking them in and their reaction – it’s priceless,” he said. But he said he enjoyed the good-deed feel of it, too. “When, as a class, we can help someone else, we should,” Trevino said.

David Bondarenko said the plan purposely did not confront smokers. The class decided the message might be more effective in a quiet moment. “It gives them a sign, like, maybe the little things in life open your eyes,” he said.

“We thought it would affect them way more,” said Angelina Contreras, who said she’ll put hers into a pack of her mother’s cigarettes. “She avoids the conversation about smoking. I don’t even try,” Contreras said. “This can say it in a different way.”

She has strong feelings about the habit, which she called “disgusting” and “just nasty.” Those feelings have facts to back them up, thanks to education provided by the Stanislaus County anti-smoking program, Protecting Health and Slamming Tobacco.

“I did learn a lot,” Bondarenko said. “People always say, ‘It’s bad.’ But what’s bad?”

Tobacco-related illnesses kill roughly half of all lifetime smokers, according to the American Cancer Society. The nicotine in cigarettes is as addictive as heroin or cocaine, making it very hard to quit.

“It’s not great for them or me,” said Tony Torres, referring to secondhand smoke. He said he will never smoke, adding, “I want to live my life.”

Contreras and Torres teamed to lead the assembly, putting on a skit in which she taped possible health problems to corresponding sites on Torres. The “premature births” sign stuck to his stomach got laughs, but the serious message got across, both said.

The day after the assembly, Gabriel Manriquez said he put one into a pack in a friend’s purse. “When she found it, her face was like, what? Then she said, ‘Wow. You really do care for me,’” he said.

The class plan gave the right message, Manriquez said, “As long as you care and it’s not to make them stop, but help them stop.”

Kylan Jetton put his decoy cigarette into a pack in his older sister’s purse, but she had not found it by the time he left for school. “She’s already been talking about quitting. She sees it’s starting to affect family members,” he said. At roughly $7 a pack, he added, smoking “is just a money pit.”

The continuation school serves Riverbank Unified School District students who need to make up credits to graduate.

The leadership class campaign against smoking is just one of many positives Principal Karen Young said she is seeing. “I think changes are happening with our students. This was really a group that didn’t feel like they had a lot of influence,” Young said. This year, she said, “We had a dozen kids working the polls on Election Day.”

This story was originally published November 24, 2014 at 3:20 PM with the headline "Riverbank teens give ‘decoy’ cigarettes with love, anti-tobacco message."