| A SMOKING LUNG: Tar Jar Lady Brings Stop-Smoking Message to Kids Fight Against Tobacco Companies Comes to Hilden School In some circles Ginny Lovell is known as The Tar Jar Lady. It's a compliment to the Vancouver woman who says she's been called worse by people in the tobacco industry, whom she undermines in hopes of keeping children from smoking. "A person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day for a year will put one litre of tar into his or her lungs in a year," Lovell said Tuesday, while holding up a repulsive looking jar of molasses for Grade 5 and 6 students at Hilden Elementary School to see. The youngsters' reactions, including squirming, and shouting words like gross and yuck, come quickly and loudly. Lovell smiles. An expert on effects of cigarettes on the human body once told her that tar, which is right up there with nicotine as a smoking hazard, most resembles molasses. That gave her the idea for her most popular visual effect. "The tobacco industry are people who make cigarettes, and sell them, and make a lot of money doing it," she said during a five-school tour of Colchester County. "The industry needs 3,000 new smokers every day because people are quitting or dying." Lovell doesn't pass judgment on her audiences. She just wants them to know that, in her opinion, they could get sucked in by the tobacco industry, especially when they see Hollywood actors lighting up on the big screen. "They get paid to do it," the speaker said. "The industry wants you to think it's what everyone is doing. But that's not true. One in four Canadians smokes - that is certainly not everyone." Lovell's father died of lung cancer, and her mother, a victim of secondhand smoke, has emphysema. "My Dad was a wonderful man who would never have harmed us," Lovell said. However, he didn't have all the facts he needed to make an informed choice about smoking. She wants to make sure today's youngsters have the information. "It would be wrong of me to say everyone who smokes will die," she said. "If you start smoking when you're a teen, though, odds are you won't live to a healthy middle age. Where does the tobacco industry tell you that?" The speaker and author doesn't put much weight into tobacco industry efforts to sponsor anti-smoking campaigns for youngsters. "I think the industry has to be seen as taking some form of action to discourage youth from smoking, but it never addresses the issues of nicotine addiction and health effects." Nova Scotia, known for having one of the highest rates of smoking in Canada, recently posted a decrease in numbers. Krista Canning, hired by the Colchester-East Hants district health authority to spearhead anti-smoking efforts, said that's a step in the right direction, but the figures were already too high, and there's plenty of work still to be done. Lovell is the author of You Are The Target, a book about Big Tobacco: Lies, Scams - Now the Truth. Her catch phrase is: Quitting Smoking is Very Hard. Tobacco companies like it that way. Wednesday November 6, 2002 |
| Reprinted by kind permission of Truro Daily News, Cathy Von Kintzel, reporter |
 |
 |
| Inverness Academy, Cape Breton Island |
 |
| J.L. Ilsley High School Halifax |
 |
| Nova Scotia November 2 - 16, 2002 |