Other Activities
Since we haven't had much luck at getting ordinances passed in our town, we decided to go to the store owners and ask them to take down their tobacco ads and to place tobacco products behind the counter. The owner of this store agreed to place all cigarettes out of the reach of children. Two gas stations took down tobacco ads, and our local Acme Market got rid of hand baskets with tobacco ads and placed all tobacco products behind the counter.
This Marlboro display use to be in the snack bar area of a local store. Our teacher called the district office of the store and told a manager that they were helping Philip Morris trick kids into smoking. The manager agreed to take the display down. He said lots of times the tobacco representatives who put up the displays don't even ask for permission. They just bring them in, hoping that no one in management notices.

Now we have the Marlboro Man display!! From now on, this one won't be used to trick kids into thinking smoking is cool! (Unfortunately there are many more across the country just like it. When you come across one, or a tobacco ad, you might want to ask the store owner to get rid of it.)

For our fourth year of participating in Kick Butts Day events, a sixth grade class wrote and performed a play called, "The Trial of the Marlboro Man". We put a patch over the Marlboro Man's throat. (He had a laryngectomy, ...had his cancerous voice box removed.) The"court" appointed a person to speak for him! The Marlboro Man was charged with tricking kids into the deadly habit of smoking. Even though his mama and Mr. Will U. Puffit, the CEO of Philip Morris, testified in his defense, the Marlboro Man was found guilty of tricking kids into the deadly habit of smoking!
Here we're going over our script with our friend Dennis. About four years ago, he got throat cancer from smoking. He had an operation to remove it, but now he has cancer in his lungs. He wanted to play a part in our play, because he wanted to tell kids about how he was tricked into thinking smoking is cool when he was a teenager. He doesn't want kids to get tricked like he did.

You can tell we had a lot of fun working on the play.We performed it for about 100 sixth graders.

A representative from the Cancer Society saw our play and asked us to take it "on the road". So next year we hope to perform it for other schools!