“Smokeout” day promotes drug awareness

Leadership students set up an event in the courtyard on Wednesday, Nov. 16, in order to celebrate the Great American Smokeout Day.

For the cause, Leadership students hung a cigarette-shaped banner in the quad that read “I pledge to be drug free.” Students came up and signed the banner, promising to steer clear of harmful substances.

The students also set up a game to promote non-smoking. Teams of three competed by dipping sponges into a bucket of water and racing to squeeze them into a separate bucket.  The task was finished when the water reached a line signifying that there were two liters of water in the container.

This game was meant to serve as an alarming visual for the amount of tar that cigarettes can put into a smoker’s body.  The students chose to use a two-liter mark because smoking ten packs of cigarettes can cause a person’s lungs to be filled with two liters of tar.

Counselors Karena Doan and Natalie Mathrole originally had the idea to hold the event at CVHS. They noted the fact that other schools do something for this day, and felt that it would be a good opportunity to encourage students to make healthy choices surrounding substance use.

Senior Jane Hong is head of the Tobacco Use Prevention Education Committee in Leadership. She saw value in the event, and hoped it would make a difference in the way CVHS students approached smoking.

When asked what she hoped the effect of the Great American Smokeout Day would be, she commented, “I think [the effect is] encouraging teenagers who don’t smoke to keep up that lifestyle, and the few students on campus who do smoke I hope will gain a new perspective of what it does to their bodies and health in general.”

Though the event dealt with a serious subject, students still found room for fun. Junior Joshua Hicken jokingly warned, “A hundred percent of people who smoke die.”