That is why I was so excited when I learned about the Word of Mouth: Youth Tobacco Prevention Program. It begins in the fourth grade, when the majority of children haven’t yet tried tobacco, but are very likely to be offered a cigarette. The program continues through the eighth grade. By providing information earlier than we have in the past, the likelihood of reducing the number of teenage and lifelong smokers is greatly increased. The lessons are fun for the kids, which makes learning this important information a lot easier.

Since being trained in February, I have led 52 sessions in 13 classrooms in five different schools: Arcadia, Bluffton, Deshler, McComb, and Vanlue. I had the opportunity to present the lessons in the traditional classroom style and to assist the Deshler students in doing the lessons over the Internet.

At all of the schools, the children eyed me somewhat skeptically at the beginning of the first lesson, but by the end of the last lesson, they were asking if I would come back to teach them more in the fifth grade. Many of them promised that they would remain tobacco free.

The response of the students speaks quite highly of the Word of Mouth program. The fourth grade lessons gave them basic information and made them want to learn even more. All of the students were able to participate in some manner when presented in the traditional style, and, of course, all of the students were very involved with the Internet lessons.

One of the questions that was asked frequently was "If somebody smokes just one cigarette, will they still get emphysema (or lung cancer, heart attack etc.)"? This led me to believe that these children were already aware of others in elementary school who had experimented with tobacco. Hopefully, armed with the information from the Word of Mouth program, these children will not start down the path leading to a lifelong addiction to nicotine.