News and Events

Students Working Against Tobacco in Highlands County Celebrate Through With Chew Week
February 21, 2015

Through with Chew Week is an annual effort to call attention to the use of smokeless tobacco products. This public awareness campaign is designed to reduce the use of smokeless tobacco among young people.

The Highlands County Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT) Chapter participated in Through with Chew Week this year in a very creative and entertaining way! Each middle school club created their own scripts, then starred and filmed their own skits depicting the harmful ingredients and dangers of using smokeless tobacco.

SWAT
Amanda John (far right) and SWAT Students at HGMS that were a part of th
e writing and filming of the Through with Chew Skit.

Each club had a blender, beef jerky, sprite, water, brown sugar and gray cake decorating balls that were blended together to call attention to the harmful ingredients in spit tobacco. Beef jerky symbolized tobacco, sprite symbolized benzene, water symbolized formaldehyde, brown sugar symbolized arsenic and the gray cake decorating balls were lead.

As the skit went on, each ingredient was placed in the blender and the end result was a nasty concoction that represented smokeless tobacco. Each skit was then shown school wide on the announcements for the week of Through with Chew.

Blended
SWAT Students from HGMS (Left to Right): Nyasia, Janay, Colby, Rikki

“The students were very excited and very creative when writing and acting out their skits,” said Amanda John, Community Health Advocate for QuitDoc and the Tobacco Free Partnership of Highlands County. “It is awesome that SWAT members are pointing out that smokeless tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarettes, as some of their peers may believe.”

The skits will eventually be perfected by each club and this tool and experiment can be used at community events, school functions, and any other area that the SWAT students feel the demonstration would fit.

For more information, contact Amanda John at ajohn@quitdoc.com.  Additional information is also available at www.tfp-highlands.org.