Students educate one another to prevent tobacco use during 'Kick Butts' day

DIXON — Quitting tobacco starts by teaching the dangers and health risks to students before habits can develop, according to a local school program.

Last week students, teachers, and administrators participated in “Kick Butts Day” at Dixon elementary school in an effort bring awareness about the addictive nature of tobacco use. Not just smoking cigarettes, either, but also smokeless tobacco.

This is the second year that Dixon has hosted this event, which is a chance for older students to teach the younger students using various stations illustrating just how dangerous tobacco can be.

Five stations were set up throughout the gym and presented a broad range of lessons: teeth loss, lung exhaustion, and what can happen to a person’s throat after continued use, and so on.

“Lots of bad things can happen,” fifth grader Shaggy Songer said at the station which displayed an oversized set of teeth—and a slimy tongue—about tobacco use. Songer lifted up the tongue to show a patch of smokeless tobacco wedged underneath. “There’s teeth loss…you need your teeth to eat. It can even kill you.”

Over at the lung station, and real lung, formerly belonging to a pig, was attached to a pump that expanded and contracted the lung with air to show how the organ works and how smoke effects it. There was even a tumor on the outside of the lung. Chris Lindquist, an eighth-grader, worked this station and said that smoking is dangerous.

“Smoking is not good for you,” said Lindquist, pressing the mechanism and filling the lung with air. “Sooner or later you can die from it.”

Some students made t-shirts that the younger students could wear.

Siarra Mattson was using a marker to make a shirt for that carried an anti-smoking message.

“It’s to show kids not to smoke and to wear it with pride,” said Mattson.

Sandra Gubel, Sanders County specialist in the anti-tobacco field, helped to organized the event as part of the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program. She said that last year’s program was such a success, that Dixon administrators asked her to come back again.

“We focus on prevention because [according to research] 90 percent of teenagers begin smoking before the age of 18,” said Gubel. “We want to make sure that doesn’t continue.”

Gubel added that she hopes every school in Sanders County will be able to participate and hold similar prevention programs—mainly due to the popularity of students teaching other students.

“Kids love to get involved,” Gubel said. “Not only to they love to teach, but it empowers them.”

Gubel’s territory in the prevention program brings her all over the county—from Dixon on up to Noxon.