Teens have heard it before: "Don’t smoke, it’s bad for you;" "Smoking will give you lung cancer;" and a million other tidbits thrown at teens from parents, teachers and even TV commercials. Still, teens smoke. Why? Because they want to — and muddled voices and TV ads don’t change the rebellion that they exhibit.

What these teens do not know is that by smoking, they are doing everything but rebelling. For years, tobacco corporations have been using teens to make money, knowing all along that these kids will feel like they are beating "the system," when in fact they are hurting themselves and helping that same system kill more people.

There is proof everywhere that tobacco companies use teens. A brief Internet search will show thousands of internal documents and memos that these companies kept from the public for decades.

For example, the Web site www.corpwatch.org quotes this New York Times editorial:

"David Goerlitz, the former Winston Man, asked R.J. Reynolds executives, 'Don't any of you smoke?' One executive replied, 'Are you kidding? We reserve that right for the poor, the young, the black and the stupid.'"

They also try to hide the bad aspects of smoking in their ads by showing beautiful, young women with white, pearly teeth, smoking in exotic locations, much like the ad on the back cover of a recent Time magazine. This is a tactic that the companies are well aware of and have used for years to fool teens into thinking that this is the image of a "typical smoker."

The true smoker is not beautiful, as smoking increases wrinkles and makes them appear sooner. The true smoker is not attractive, as the smell is intrusive and yellowed teeth are a side effect.

"When I kiss a girl, they don’t say my breath tastes like an ashtray," says Jeckster Rico, an LVA freshman. "I don’t smoke because I don’t want to."

The smoker is not beating the system; in fact, they are giving into it. Major tobacco companies have been quoted saying they think teens are stupid enough to get hooked on their addictive product.

For years teens have been tricked into getting addicted as well. The tobacco companies concentrate on the quality and flavor of the tobacco they use in their cigarettes, without mentioning the addictive and harmful ingredients they sneak into each light.

There are reasons that the habit is so hard to break. Nicotine, a drug more addictive than heroin, is inhaled by the teen smoker every time he or she lights up, and it is just the most infamous ingredient in cigarettes. Other additives making their way into the lungs, blood and tissues of smokers are acetone, ammonium hydroxide, butanedione, para-dimethylbenzyl alcohol, tar, sandalwood oil, patchouli oil, rum and prune juice concentrate. Those are just 10 of the 599 additives in tobacco. Forty-three of them are proven to cause cancer. For a complete list, go to www.quitsmoking.about.com.

"Cigarettes are expensive, addictive, and they smell bad," says a Las Vegas Academy student who has been smoking for a while now.

Retain the dignity of someone who has not let his or her life be controlled by a fat-cat group of business executives who will gladly bear your death in exchange for your money. Say no, not because of television ads, not because teachers tell you to and not because parents threaten you. Say no because you don’t want to be controlled by someone and something who could not care less about you.

-Return to March 2003 Issue-