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March 16. 2010 6:00AM

Bailey Quanbeck thinks her classmates may think twice before deciding to smoke, now that they know some of the ingredients in cigarettes.

“I was surprised to find out that fingernail polish was in them,” the eighth grader said.

Brandon Valley Middle School students learned about the dangers of tobacco from Peter DeBenedittis, a former ad agency director who now tours the country telling people how tobacco advertising tricks people into using the product.

“What fires together, wires together,” was the main theme of three talks he gave March 5 in Brandon. After speaking to middle school students in the morning, he spoke to high school students in the afternoon and community members that evening.
The daytime presentations were sponsored by a grant that school counselor Amy Lupkes arranged. The evening presentation was sponsored by the Brandon Tobacco Prevention Coalition, through a grant from the South Dakota Department of Human Services.

Gaylen Smith of Volunteers of America is the director of the coalition. He said DeBenedittis told him that audiences, especially in the middle school, were hanging on every word. “He said he doesn’t know when he’s ever had such an attentive audience,” Smith said.

“He was very energetic,” said sophomore Samantha Thompson. “He never got tired of it. He kept on. Everybody paid attention.”

DeBenedittis’s high-energy presentation included old cigarette commercials from television.

“The one that was the funniest was Fred and Barney of the Flintstones,” said Heidi Small. “Wilma and Betty were working in the yard, and Fred and Barney were leaning against the wall, smoking, watching the women work hard.”

Small took her 8-year-old daughter to the evening presentation, held at Celebration United Methodist Church. “I don’t think you can start talking to your children too young,” she said.

DeBenedittis agrees. “From junior high through high school, half a million ads hit your brain,” he said. The ads equate smoking with glamour, power, sex, fun, beauty and other desirable things. But smoking doesn’t deliver, Small said. She saw her grandfather “slowly suffocate” from emphysema caused by smoking. “It was absolutely terrible,” she said.

“Once you’re on it, you can’t quit. Kids need to know that it’s not just something you can do for a short time and then think when you’re older it’s not cool any more. It doesn’t work that way.”

During the evening session, DeBenedittis showed parents what the subliminal messages were behind the ads. Ones aimed at women, for example, suggested that if you smoke, you’ll be more powerful or thinner.

One of the video segments DeBenedittis showed high schoolers was a former cigarette spokesman telling why he quit doing the ads. When he asked tobacco executives why they didn’t smoke, they told him, “We don’t smoke them, we sell them. We reserve the right to sell them to the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.”
DeBenedittis said it’s fine to go after power, glamour and the rest. “If you want what they’re selling you, go out and get it,” he told students. “But don’t be dumb.”

While the school and the coalition worked together to bring in the speaker this spring, the coalition does activities throughout the year.
“We have been to some of the day care centers in Brandon and done presentations,” Smith said. “The little ones can carry the message home to their parents.” To clinics and dentist offices in Brandon, the coalition passed out kits filled with toothpicks, floss, mints, chewing gum candies and information on the dangers of chewing tobacco.

This spring, the coalition plans to hold “Bag of Butts Day,” where recruited families will pick up trash around sporting events and separate out the cigarette butts.

The coalition also plans to pass out information during several summer events, said Small, who is a coalition member.