Educational Media Reviews Online

Peer pressure, family history, advertisements and the media all play a part in encouraging teenagers to smoke cigarettes. This program reiterates the dangers of smoking. Brandon Carmichael, a teenager who started smoking when he was fifteen years old, tells how smoking affected his life. Bob Herbst tells viewers in detail how he lost his larynx (voice box) and now speaks through a hole in his neck. His story is even more heartbreaking because he knew what cigarettes could do and he chose to smoke anyway. His grandfathers had emphysema and his father only has one lung. At the end of the program additional clips are available that include a representative from the American Lung Association showing a healthy lung and explaining the job of the cilia. An interactive multiple choice quiz and a list of additional resources make this program an asset to library collections.

Highly recommended, this program would be of particular use in health and physical education courses in junior high school. Terms are clearly defined and displayed on screen, making it easy for students to take notes. In particular, lung cancer, emphysema, arteriosclerosis, halitosis and Buerger’s disease are defined with graphic illustrations. These illustrations send a strong message to teens about what they are doing to themselves when they smoke.