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Students REACT to teen smoking rise Peer pressure sought through regional forum By VICKI GUARINO About 120 students from area high schools and middle schools spent much of the day Tuesday plotting to outmaneuver cigarette makers. Their goal is to devise campaigns to cut an alarming rise in tobacco use among their friends and classmates. "Kids listen to their peers more than they do their parents or other adults," said participant John Wickre, a South Medford High School 10th-grader. John was part of the countywide forum, Operation REACT (Responsibility, Education and Awareness Can Teach), and a member of a student team from North and South Medford high schools that organized the event. The Jackson County tobacco education program hosted the session at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater. Students from nine schools from Ashland to Central Point attended. "A lot of work and a lot of thought went into this," said county tobacco prevention and education program coordinator Jane Stevenson. "The kids said they wanted to do this because they care." Operation REACT is the first program of its kind in Jackson County. It is expected to be the starting point for numerous student anti-tobacco campaigns for the rest of the school year. It was prompted by high tobacco use among teens. A 1998 survey showed 30 percent of Jackson County eighth-graders used tobacco in the month prior to the survey, up from 24 percent in 1996. For 11th-graders, use rose to 35 percent, up from 27 percent in 1996. Meanwhile, other surveys show use among Oregon adults declining. "We're at an all-time high right now for kids," Stevenson said. "We felt like we really need to get the input of youth." The REACT session put students in small discussion and lecture groups for much of the day. Guest speakers provided information about the health problems associated with smoking, tobacco use among teens and the marketing of tobacco to a teen market. Young teens are advertising targets, according to records from tobacco company files that have been made public as a result of numerous lawsuits across the country. Featured speaker Erik Vidstrand, representing the Portland health group Northwest DOC (Doctors Ought to Care), showed students numerous instances where advertising and product placement focused on youth. Later in the day, students used that information when they broke into school groups to plot their own campaigns. They started planning a variety of local projects and events for the coming few months to persuade their peers to stop smoking -- or to never start. South students, for instance, want to confront restaurants that permit smoking, particularly places like pizza parlors that cater to young crowds. North students want to use humor -- skits involving students dressed as cigarettes, perhaps -- to get smokers to think about their habits. They also are planning a poster and information campaign at elementary schools. Ashland Middle Schoolers want to include some kind of message for adults because many young children get their first cigarettes from parents or other adults they know well. Once the school groups settle their plans, they may apply for funding to carry out their work from the tobacco prevention program. The program board has set aside $5,000 countywide. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA