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Aims:

To raise awareness of:

• the addictive nature of cigarettes
• the effect of tobacco smoke on others

Synopsis:

The Quit series of five programmes has been designed to raise awareness of a range of issues surrounding cigarette smoking and legal controls on the use of tobacco. Using personal testimonies, the audience is introduced to the impact smoking has on people’s health and lifestyle. Smokers and non-smokers alike discuss how addiction to cigarettes has influenced their lives or those of their families. The series also focuses on how tobacco companies use marketing and advertising techniques to influence people’s smoking behaviour.

Programme 4: A Breath of Fresh Air
Using interviews with representatives from the tobacco industry, this programme outlines marketing techniques used to sell cigarettes to consumers. It highlights the fact that tobacco companies aggressively market to teenagers in the hope of recruiting them as smokers, in order to create a new market to replace existing smokers who are dying of smoking-related diseases.

00.00 – 03.39
A humorous animation that plays on various associations with ‘dog end’. A teenager tries to smoke without anyone knowing. He's constantly frustrated as the family dog keeps barking when he smokes, identifying where he is. Deprived of nicotine the boy becomes increasingly desperate for a cigarette. Taking the dog for a walk looks like a way out. The boy smokes over the dog which gets sick and dies leaving him feeling guilty.

Curriculum Relevance:

This programme has a major PSHE and citizenship focus with opportunities for cross-curricular work involving religious and moral education, modern studies, English, drama and art. It has a locus in whole-school approaches to health and community development.

England & Wales

PSHE and Citizenship: Key Stage 4
National Healthy Schools Standard for Citizenship: Key Stage 4

Northern Ireland

Personal and Social Education Guidance for Key Stages 3 and 4
Social and Environmental Studies: Health and Drugs Education

Teachers should be aware of relevant guidelines for Key Stage 4 emerging from the Civic, Social and Political Education programme of study in the revised NI curriculum, which aims to prepare young people for participation in:

• a culturally diverse and inclusive society (social values)
• a fair and just society (civic values)
• democratic society (political values)

Scotland

Scottish Executive: Guidance on Health Education, PSD, and Citizenship - middle to upper secondary stages.

Background Information:

Passive smoking and children
Children are more susceptible to the effects of passive smoking than adults. In one study, cotinine levels, which are a marker of exposure to tobacco smoke, were found in the saliva of children in households where both parents smoked. When measured these children were found to have received a nicotine equivalent of 80 cigarettes in a year.

Bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma and other chronic respiratory illnesses are significantly more common in children and infants who have one or two smoking parents. The larger the number of smokers in the household, the greater the risk of cancer for non-smokers in the family. Children of parents who smoke during the child’s earlier life run a higher risk of cancer in adulthood.

For more information about the risks of passive smoking go to links and visit the ASH website.

Smoking prevention
Since the 1970s health education including the health effects of smoking has been introduced to the curriculum of most primary and secondary schools in the UK. Research suggests that knowing about smoking is a necessary component of anti-smoking campaigns but by itself does not affect smoking rates.

It may, however, postpone initiation which also potentially has the effect of reducing the number of years exposure, and reduces exposure during a particularly vulnerable phase of growth and development.

Recent research shows that while the price of cigarettes does not appear to affect initial experimentation with smoking, it is an important tool in reducing youth smoking once the habit has become established.

Activities:

Before viewing
Tell the students they are going to see one of a series of short films focusing on issues around smoking and tobacco control.

After viewing
Key questions

a) What key message/s was the film trying to get across?
b) What techniques were employed to do this?
c) How successful did individuals feel this was?
d) What impact had the film made on them?

Activity 1
In groups, or as a class, ask students to identify the emotions they felt as they watched the animation progress. (You might want to show the film again before doing this.) Ask them to account for these emotions. There is no speech in the animation. Does everyone share the same interpretation of the film? If not, does this affect understanding about the effects of smoking and passive smoking?

Activity 2
Get students to identify and audit the effectiveness of all measures in the school or college that are designed to stop people smoking and protect people from tobacco smoke. What recommendations would they make? How would they go about taking these forward? How else might they participate in preventing people being harmed by tobacco smoke?

Links:

This web page contains links to other websites that are neither controlled nor maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

www.ash.org.uk

Website of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Contains sections on all aspects of tobacco control including passive smoking. Has wide-ranging statistics and summaries of recent research.

www.cancerresearchuk.org

Has a good general section on cancer, information on developments in scientific understanding and research, and cancer help.

Quit: Programme 1: A Hole in my Neck
Credits:

Produced and directed by Emma Wakefield