Students from Miles Exploratory Learning Center celebrate the unveiling of smoke-free themed art on a bus bench near their school on March 31, 2015.Listen:
A group of Tucson students unveiled a new effort Tuesday to fight tobacco use.
The bus bench outside the school yard Miles Exploratory Learning Center on East Broadway is now adorned with messages, including “Miles students at play, put your cigarettes away.”
Members of the Miles’ student wellness advocacy team, known as SWAT, held a school-wide poster contest to find art for the bus bench.
“We hope that the people who sit here see the banner and see the bench and realize that there are kids playing and adults playing at Miles and hope they will decide to not smoke there,” sixth-grader Minha Castle said.
The bench decor is a local observation of Kick Butts Day, a national event that strives to raise awareness about the negative consequences of tobacco use.The school collaborated with the Pima County Health Department to complete the project.
“Pima County smoking rates among youth are consistently higher than the state average for 8th, 10th and 12th graders,” County health educator Lindsay Dashefsky said. “What we’re looking at is to change the youth’s exposure to smoking.”
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