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Beating them at their own
game
Anti-tobacco guru Georgina Lovell
encourages kids the Davids of the world have a shot at beating
the Goliaths of tobacco
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From left to right are Tyler Doris,
Linda Tutt, Emily Lawrence, Georgina Lovell and Kevin
Cambridge. Lovell, a famous clean air advocate, was in
town earlier this month.
Jen
Woodward/Record-Gazette | Peace River Record
Gazette — Students were inspired to beat
tobacco companies at their own game as self-described clean
air advocate Georgina Lovell visited area schools.
After
four years of researching formerly top-secret documents from
tobacco companies from as early as 1950, Lovell created her
"You are the Target" campaign, and she has been gaining
international fame. The T.A. Norris BLAST (Building Leadership
for Action in Schools Today) group raised the necessary $3,500
to bring Lovell to Peace River for three days at the beginning
of June.
She spent her time with students in Peace River
and Grimshaw encouraging them to look the tobacco beast in the
eye.
"The tobacco companies do what is necessary to make
sure youth become addicted," she said, but, "armed with
information, [youth] become moving targets."
One document,
dated in the 1970s, praised the value of peer pressure in
recruiting young smokers.
"’Thousands of new smokers must
be recruited,’" she read from the transcript, explaining the
need for recruitment was in order to replace the smokers who
died each year.
"Kids are tobacco companies’ replacement
smokers."
Another document dated in 1978 encouraged fellow
tobacco company giants, "we really need something for people
to die of".
Lovell says her campaign -- and ‘Project
Moving Target’, a mentorship program which schools can use as
part of their curriculum -- is unique in changing young
people’s attitudes. Instead of telling the students how
smoking can make them sick, it tells them what tobacco
companies think of them, and lets them turn their outrage into
action.
"It’s raising awareness about this industry that
has our kids firmly in their scope. You can see how scientists
deliberately devised mehtods to ensure cigarettes are as
addictive as they can be. And when young people understand how
they’ve been tricked, they’re faced with a
choice."
Throughout the course of Lovell’s hundreds of
presentations, she says the student response never ceases to
be "overwhelming."
"Hell hath no fury like teenagers who
think they’re being taken for fools," she said.
Sasha
Laboucan, a seventh-grader at T.A. Norris, said she was
grateful for Lovell’s presentation.
"It’s wrong that they
can just lie to people like that and millions of people go and
buy a pack of cigarettes."
Lovell took time to praise the
efforts of local community group Project ASPiRe (Advocates for
a Smoke-Free Peace River).
"Smoke laws are the biggest
threat to the tobacco companies," she says, "because if people
can’t smoke, they won’t."
She encouraged the youth to take
proactive measures to let town officials know how they feel
about smoking.
Even employees in a tobacco company aren’t
allowed to smoke in their industry greenhouses for fear of
harming the seedlings, she said.
" Do you think you deserve
any less protection from a cancer-causing substance than a
tobacco seedling in an industry greenhouse? I think you do.
“The tobacco industry is never going to go away, and
therefore, neither can we."
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