Mixing the message

The recent visit by a group of 10th-grade students from St. Paul's School and St. Paul's School for Girls to a Calvert County tobacco farm seems counterproductive to statewide efforts to reduce young people's exposure to tobacco products ("Students explore new fields," June 7).

Certainly, tobacco farming in Maryland is part of our state's history and deserves to be studied. However, this "hands-on" lesson in which students planted tobacco raises alarming questions and seems to send a mixed message.

Cigarette smoking remains the nation's leading cause of preventable death. Yet, while public health advocates and educators work day in and day out to warn youths about the dangers of tobacco use, at the same time we take students on field trips to show them how this killer crop is planted.

Nearly one in four Maryland high school students today is a smoker. And in Maryland alone, kids under 18 purchase 13.4 million packs of cigarettes each year, and each year 12,800 kids under 18 become new, daily smokers.

Maryland spends more than $20 million a year from the state's share of the 1998 multistate settlement with tobacco companies on tobacco education, prevention and cessation programs - and our youths are one of the target audiences.

There is no doubt that our state's anti-tobacco efforts are working.

In 1999, Maryland legislators raised the per-pack cigarette tax by 30 cents - resulting in a 30 percent drop in smoking among the state's 10th-graders and 20,000 fewer young smokers.

And, during the last General Assembly session, lawmakers approved a 34-cent-a-pack cigarette tax increase, which will result in an estimated 15,600 fewer young smokers and save 4,900 kids from premature, smoking-related deaths.

We're on the right track in Maryland - but it's unfortunate when we veer off-course by taking our schoolchildren to a farm where tobacco has been a staple crop for generations.

"We are studying social history here," one of the history teachers in the article was quoted as saying. Certainly this is one history lesson that could, and should, have been taught from textbooks alone.

Dr. Robert Brookland

Towson

The writer is president of the Mid-Atlantic Division of the American Cancer Society.

Trusting our students

The St. Paul's Schools were recently notified by the American Cancer Society of its displeasure with our study of "Tobacco in Maryland," a course offered during our May Plan, a four-day immersion learning program for high school students that took place during the last week of school.

The tobacco policies of both schools are stated clearly in their student handbooks, and both fully support the mission of the American Cancer Society. Our May Plan study, like our school policies, did not promote or condone tobacco use.

Our mini-course was designed to look at the historic and social impact that this plant and industry have left on our state and region, from the colonial era to the current buyout program.

Public and personal health were central themes in our learning. The day before our field trip, our students did Internet research at various sites - including those of the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society - to prepare for roles in mock panel discussions.

The day after our trip, we downloaded at least a dozen anti-smoking ads from a Web site (www.thetruth.com, a site paid for by the same legal settlement funding as the Maryland tobacco buyout program, as our students learned), and analyzed and discussed their content and effectiveness.

The message from the American Cancer Society is being heard by our students, who were well-informed about second-hand smoke, cigarette additives and other tobacco health issues.

We oppose teen-age smoking. But our mission as educational institutions - to encourage critical thinking and engaged citizenship - demands we explore and present multiple of points of view.

We have to trust that our students, like learners everywhere, will use the information to make the right decisions.

Kevin J. Cronin

Tucker Fulwiler

Brookland

The writers are teachers at the St. Paul's Schools.