Plains High School students 'Kick Butts'

Plains High School students played a Jeopardy-style game around the facts they were given about smoking and e-cigarettes during their English class last Friday as part of Kick Butts Day.

Sandra Gubel, who is the Sanders County Tobacco Prevention Specialist, brought a PowerPoint presentation to Mr. Tatum’s English class and had the different classes play a Jeopardy styled game throughout the day, learning the facts about smoking given to them by four presenters. Three Noxon High School students; Hilary VanVleet, Clay King, and Phalyn Fickas, took turns during the presentation giving their peers in Plains information about the dangers of smoking and using e-cigarettes.

VanVleet was the first presenter. She informed the second freshman English class about the things known to be in e-cigarettes. Among the known things are metals, known carcinogens such as acetaldehyde, glycol, and diacetyl.

Fickas was the second presenter. He discussed the U.S. Surgeon General giving a special report about how the use of electronic vapor products is increasing and leading to addiction to regular cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. Fickas stated the dangers to the developing brain of teenagers.

“The Surgeon General is saying they are unsafe for people our age because our brains are still developing until we are 23 years old. The nicotine affects attention, learning, mood disorders, and impulses, and susceptibility to nicotine, even after a few cigarettes or vapes,” Fickas said.

King was the third presenter, he spoke about how there have been e-cigarettes exploding and doing serious damage to both homes and individuals. Several slides showed the aftermath of an e-cigarette disaster in a home, another slide showed what happened to a leg after the device had exploded in the pants pocket, and a third slide showed a hole in a smokers tongue from an e-ciagarette exploding. King talked about the ejuice and the dangers posed to the makers of the e-cigarettes and those customers who are using it.

“Workers in a lab are wearing Haz-Mat suits when they are making the e-juice. There have also been children who died from ingesting the e-juice, as little as one teaspoon can kill a child,” King said.

Gubel was the fourth, and final, presenter. She spoke from her own experiences and memories of her mother, who died in August 2016. She told the Plains High School students about how her mother had unintentionally become one of the “replacement smokers” many of the cigarette companies has been seeking for many decades. She reported how her mom had begun smoking like most teenagers, starting young at 16 years old. Her smoking brought on diabetes, congestive heart failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (known as COPD). She told of how her mom had spent the last 10 years of life going to many doctors appointments.

“I have so much more I wanted to do,” was one of the last things Gubel’s mother had told her before she died.

After the presentations, the class divided into four teams and answered questions that involved the facts they had just been given by the presenters.

Reporter Douglas Wilks can be reached at dwilks@vp-mi.com or (406) 862-3402.