1. Turn in your student workbook to page 21.
Using what you have learned in the previous lesson about the consequences of alcohol use, answer the questions under Alcohol & Consequences.
Once you have completed your workbook assessment, turn to page 52 and begin your journal entry for Tobacco: Get the Facts.

2. Bell Ringer Open your student workbook to page 52.
Under the heading titled Journal Entry, write 3 things you think you know about tobacco, or 3 things you learned from surveying your peers.

3. Unit 5: Tobacco, Alcohol & Other Drug Prevention
Lesson 4: Tobacco: Get the Facts

4. Healthy Behavior Outcomes
Avoid using (or experimenting with) any form of tobacco.
Support others to be tobacco free.

5. Lesson Objectives By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Summarize why individuals choose to use tobacco.
Summarize the negative short- and long-term physical effects of tobacco use.
Summarize the negative personal and social consequences of tobacco use.
Summarize the negative effects of secondhand smoke.
Use accurate norms to support an advocacy message around avoiding tobacco use.

6. Teens & Tobacco: What Do You Think?
Take out your completed Teens & Tobacco: What Do You Think? peer surveys you received at the end of the previous class.

7. How many of you interviewed peers who had been offered tobacco to smoke?
How many of you interviewed peers who’d been offered smokeless tobacco?
At what ages were the peers you interviewed offered tobacco?
What conclusions could you draw from this survey about the pressure teens you know are facing around tobacco?

8. What are the reasons you and your partner wrote regarding why some teens might start to smoke or chew tobacco?

9. Summary
Teens may face pressure to use tobacco and may start to use it for many different reasons.
It is up to you to understand which pressures or reasons would be most strong for you so you can use this knowledge to help you resist tobacco.
You will be learning more in future classes about how to recognize internal and external influences and pressures and ways to deal with them in positive ways.

10. What percent of high school students did your peers think smoke tobacco?
What percent of high school students did your peers think use chew or smokeless tobacco?
How many of you agree with the perceptions of your peers?
How many of you think something different?

11. According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey of high school students from across the country, only 18% of all high school students have smoked tobacco.
Slightly less than 8% have used smokeless tobacco in the past 30 days.

12. If a person thinks more people around his or her age are using tobacco than actually are, how might this affect choices around tobacco use?

13. Summary
When teens think more people their age use tobacco than actually do, they may be more likely to experiment with or try tobacco.
It is important to know that most students your age are not currently using tobacco.
Knowing the truth – that most high school students are tobacco free – can help you make smart choices about tobacco.

14. What are some of the words your peers used to describe teens who use tobacco?
What are some of the words your peers used to describe adults who use tobacco?
What did you notice?
Are there any differences between the words peers use to describe teen tobacco users versus adult tobacco users? Why do you think this is?

15. Summary
The attitudes young people hold about tobacco use and people who use tobacco can influence their own choices about smoking or using smokeless tobacco.
Views toward tobacco use may change as people become older or as they learn more about or see the effects of nicotine on the tobacco users they know.

16. What were your peers’ opinions on the last survey question – Whether the nicotine in tobacco is as harmful as other drugs?
How many of the teens you interviewed agreed that the nicotine in tobacco was as harmful as other drugs? Why?
How many disagreed and thought it was less harmful? Why?

17. Turn to page 12 in your student workbook.
There are Tobacco Mini-posters placed around the room.
Read the directions on page 12 and answer each question using the posters around the room.
Once you complete the activity, compare and discuss your answers with a partner.

18. Now that you have reviewed some of the many negative consequences of tobacco use, how would you answer that last survey question on whether the nicotine in tobacco is as harmful as other drugs?

19. Summary Nicotine is a very powerful drug and is very addictive.
Some of the serious negative health consequences take time to develop, but, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, more people die from tobacco use each year than all of the people killed by illegal drugs in the last century, and, for every person who dies from tobacco use, 20 more suffer from at least one serious tobacco-related illness.

20. When you were reading the mini-posters about the negative effects of tobacco, how many of you thought that the information was related to cigarettes?
How many of you thought the facts related to smokeless or spit tobacco?
Did you think about any other tobacco products as you were reading the negative effects? If so, which ones?

21. Why do you think tobacco companies would promote these other products, especially to young people?

22. Summary
The younger people are when they begin to use a drug, the more likely it is they will become addicted.
If tobacco companies can get teens hooked on tobacco in any form, many of those teens will go on to become lifelong customers of the company’s product.
The good news is that teens are getting the facts and understanding the dangers, as shown by the decline in the number of teens who smoke cigarettes.

23. What facts did you learn about tobacco?