Anti-Smoking Role Playing

About 85 percent of the people who smoke wish they could stop, and yet they have to go through the agony of quitting. Read the following text and know more about the hazards of smoking, some valuable precautions against falling into tobacco abuse.

 In 1988, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that cigarettes are as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Scientists and smokers who have tried to quit have known for a long time that smoking is addictive. They have said that smokers are hooked on their own kind of drug, nicotine. However, with this new declaration, it is clearer that smoking is a medical problem. When a smoker who tries to stop has a difficult time, it is not a sign of weakness. Smoking is more than just a bad habit such as eating too much sweet food.

If this is the case, why do so many people start in the first place? Do they fear being different? Do they think smoking will relax them? Do they hope that smoking will help them cover up their awkwardness and shyness? Do they worry that they will be called "chicken" if they don't smoke? What can you say when someone accuses you of being afraid to smoke? There are some easy answers, whether you are being pushed to smoke tobacco or marijuana.

Molly learned a good answer through a skit that was part of a so-called inoculation program in her social-studies class. In the skit Molly's friends Bill, Mary, and Tim played the parts of teenagers who smoked. Molly's character was someone who had decided not to smoke and resisted being branded a weirdo when she refused a cigarette that was offered to her.

In the skit, Molly walked over to talk with Bill, Mary, and Tim, who were standing together with their backs toward her. Molly hadn't realized they were smoking until she joined them. Tim offered Molly a cigarette, but she turned it down.

"Come on, Molly," taunted Bill. "Don't be chicken. Join the group."

Molly refused to be baited. Instead, she laughed and said, "I would be more of a chicken if I smoked just to impress you." Then she smiled at Bill and quickly steered the conversation to another subject.

Molly and other people in her class who did not want to be pressured into smoking practiced this straightforward and simple refusal many times.

Through this process known as inoculation, many school programs are toughening up young people who don't want to start smoking.Much as people can be inoculated against germs, they can be protected from the social pressures that encourage them to smoke. Boys and girls who have not yet started smoking can be exposed to a weak dose of "social germs" and thus learn the necessary skills to resist stronger pressure from their peers.

The inoculation method demonstrated in the skit starring Molly and her friends is called role playing. Actually, role playing is used as a way to prepare people for many kinds of situations. Secret service men, FBI agents, sheriffs, detectives, and a wide variety of specialists who work with people are trained this way. In a totally nonthreatening environment, participants can rehearse skills that can be used in more highly pressured situations when their emotions might interfere with their intentions. Role playing is a way of making certain that one can stay in control, and it is especially helpful for those who do not want to be talked into smoking.

Molly's class practiced role playing in a variety of skits. In one of them, her classmate John played the part of a boy who encounters some people he barely knows at a party. John isn't at the gathering long before he discovers that he is the only non-smoker. He wants to feel accepted, but he really doesn't want to start smoking.

Someone in the skit remarks, "Everyone smokes. Why don't you?"

John mentions to his new acquaintances the trouble that his brother is having trying to quit smoking. He puts the cigarette down without lighting it and remarks casually that he doesn't want to go through the agony of quitting.
    The boy who offered the cigarette to John admits that for three months he has been trying to stop smoking. John smiles. He knows that most of the people who smoke wish they had never started. John feels good about himself.

Sue practices dealing with an angry smoker in a skit that involves her waiting in line at the movies. Someone in front of her is blowing smoke in her face, and Sue makes a gesture that indicates her annoyance, but the smoker ignores it. Finally Sue speaks up and asks the person not to blow the smoke in her direction. The smoker gets angry and tells Sue to grow up. She practices some reasonable arguments she can use if she ever really finds herself in such a situation.

In another skit, health hazards are emphasized by having one person play the part of a doctor who has the unpleasant task of telling a man he must stop smoking because he has developed lung cancer. And in still another skit, a person who is struggling for breath because of a serious disease called emphysema begs the doctor to help him stop the smoking that contributed to his illness. He seems unable to quit on his own despite the discomfort and seriousness of the disease.

A very popular skit is one in which a son or daughter tries to persuade a parent to stop smoking. One of the arguments used by the young people points out that more than a hundred life-insurance companies offer special rates for nonsmokers because their life expectancy is greater. Children ask their parents why they knowingly engage in such self-destructive behavior when they direct so much of their energy toward preserving their lives.

Role playing is just one part of anti-smoking inoculation. Another part involves examining the reasons why you do not want to begin smoking. Some of these may be: avoiding bad breath, reduced athletic stamina, stained teeth, and smelly clothing; not wanting to get hooked; and wanting control of your own actions; a sense of well-being today and good health tomorrow.

One television message points out the fact that smoking is bad for your looks. It shows a beautiful woman lying on a couch smoking her cigarette. She gradually turns into an old hag. The scientific reason for wrinkles caused by smoking is well known, even though the wrinkles do not appear as fast as they do in the television spot. Smoking reduces the circulation of the blood to the skin, causing deeper-than-normal wrinkles at the outer edge of the eyes. Wrinkles appear around the lips prematurely, too, and, in time the skin of a heavy smoker tends to be yellow-gray rather than a rosy, healthy color.

In today's world smoking is no longer considered socially acceptable by the majority of people, so social problems might be included in a list of reasons for not starting to smoke.

Finding a seat in the smoking section of a plane, train, or other area can be inconvenient. Today, smoking is forbidden in many indoor areas, and in some cases smokers have been asked to put out their cigarettes outdoors. When a smoking ban was announced on one airline, the passengers cheered. Even where smoking is permitted, nicotine addicts are beginning to feel like outcasts. In restaurants, they try to wave the smoke away from their nonsmoking friends. When they ask for permission to smoke in a friend's home, they are embarrassed to watch the friend hunt for an ashtray. Many friends just say no to a request for permission to smoke in their homes. Some smokers steal a few puffs on the street before eating some breath mints. At the office, they slink into hallways, bathrooms, and stairwells. Certainly, social acceptance seems like a poor entry for a list of reasons for beginning to smoke.

An increasing number of companies refuse to hire people who smoke.This practice is legal even though it is not legal to refuse a person on the basis of age, race, or religion. Since most people find it difficult to stop smoking once they start, and some find it impossible even though it has been responsible for their lung cancer or other life-threatening illnesses, students who are being inoculated against smoking often ask why anyone starts to smoke.

Many girls and boys who do not know much about smoking begin to smoke because some friends pressure them to do so. Some very young people who know about the problems of smokers believe that they will not become addicted. As in the cases mentioned earlier, they feel certain that the problems won't happen to them.

Feeling more grown-up is another reason young people give for smoking. However, using smoking as a rite of passage to the grown-up world is becoming less popular. Intelligent people no longer consider smoking a symbol of adulthood, since most adults who smoke wish they had never started.

Another once-common reason for starting to smoke is also disappearing. At one time, young smokers were believed to be rejecting the authority of their parents. Study after study has shown, however, that parents who smoke are likely to have children who smoke. In fact, teenagers who have two parents who smoke are twice as likely to smoke as those with nonsmoking parents. Smoking by these young people can hardly be considered a form of adolescent rebellion.

"Everybody smokes," is a statement that is often made by smokers who want others to join them, but statistics show that it is further from the truth than it ever has been. Only about 19 percent of high school seniors smoke daily. And as more and more young people inoculate themselves against developing the habit, and as more nonsmokers fight for their rights to breathe fresh air, the anti-smoking trend should continue to grow.

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