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July 16, 2007
Daddy was a
product of his generation, growing up on a large Kansas ranch in the
1930s. Behind the barn, he smoked his first cigarette at eleven years
of age, the initiation of a life-long habit that eventually killed
him.
Marlboro
Man…Lucky Strike…the sign of “cool”, a cigarette perched on the lips
of cowboys and movie stars…kids were naturally born on a path to
become smokers, and in 1955, the cigarette could claim 57% per cent of
the male population as “users.”
Undaunted by the
social acceptance and prevalence of smoking, in the 50s, health
workers launched a campaign to begin an education of the public to the
dangers of tobacco. In 7th grade science, I watched movies
of smoking machines depositing tar into glass tubes. And in spite of
denials from the tobacco industry, news reports began to link smoking
with heart disease and cancer.
Progress was
slow. By 1965, 52% of males were still smokers. Ten years of
advertising for change, and still over half of American men 18 years
of age and older continued to smoke. One might have considered the
campaign doomed to failure.
Daddy was
evidence of this failure. In spite of his analytical nature and the
mounting evidence against cigarettes, he remained entrenched as a
smoker. His sister died of emphysema…my Dad continued to light up.
My uncle underwent surgery for lip cancer…my Dad continued to
smoke…two packs a day.
My sister and I
went off to college, non-smokers both of us. Eventually, my mother
gained a concession from Dad. He would at least move his smoking
out-of-doors, onto the back patio. But elevators, restaurants and
offices…those were a different matter.
One night at the
dinner table, he recounted the insult of being asked by someone not to
smoke in the elevator. “Can you believe that?” he asked. “This is a
free country. They don’t have any right to tell me what to do! If I
want to smoke, I’ll smoke.”
The Marlboro Man
eventually died of smoking. So did my dad. Joe Camel Cool was sent
to prison. The tobacco industry finally caved in to the evidence.
Warnings from the Surgeon General are legislated on every pack of
cigarettes. And Turner Classics have been edited to remove cigarettes
from the lips of Bogey and Bacall.
But wouldn’t you
know it. The campaign to rid our country from smoking is doomed to
fail. In 2004, one fifth of the total population, male and female,
continued to smoke. In the prior year, 48% of young adults 18-25 had
smoked, and during their lifetime, 69% of them tried this deadly
habit. Failed. We are doomed.
We might as well
admit that smoking is a temptation that will entice young people. We
may as well face failure straight in the face and give up. Let’s not
hurt their self-esteem. We certainly don’t want to make them hide a
secret habit. Since kids are going to smoke anyway, let’s teach them
to choose their cigarettes wisely. Smart smoking…if they are going to
ignore our warnings and light up, let’s at least teach them “safe
smoking.”
Ridiculous?
Then consider the consistent doom and gloom of “sexperts” who chastise
health educators who want the best for our youth and have set their
expectations on creating change.
Abstinence
education? Doomed! Kids are going to have sex anyway. Give up.
Let’s teach them to enjoy sex. We don’t want them to hide their
sexual encounters. We don’t want the facts to scare them…let’s let
them believe the myth of “safe sex.”
Doom and gloom?
This is the foundation of the push to legitimize sex for teens as an
acceptable and “safe” behavior. They’re going to do “it” anyway.
But are they?
Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) suggest that the fear
of increasing rates of teenage sexual behavior may be unfounded. For
example, teenagers seem to be waiting longer to have intercourse. The
percentage of 12th-grade U.S. students who reported having had
intercourse declined from 66.7% in 1991 to 60.5% in 2001.
This six percent
decrease is all the more incredible when you consider that these teens
live in a sex-saturated culture that refuses to deglamorize casual
random sex. It is miraculous when you consider the prevalence of
“sexperts” who continue to promise “saferrrrrrrrrr sex” as the follow
up to “safe sex” which has been thoroughly discredited by science.
Doomed to fail?
If history is any teacher, the surest way to lead our youth to failure
is to teach them they have no other alternative.
Doomed to fail?
If teachers believe teens are doomed to fail and build an educational
program founded on failure as an expectation, what choice will our
teens have?
Failure as an
expectation? Then we are indeed doomed.
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for past editorials.
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