Published: April 22, 2007 11:05 am      

Miss Teen cautions youth

Miss Teen Eastern Panhandle has handle on tobacco

KEYSER — Miss Teen Eastern Panhandle Courtney Nelson has seen too many friends and relatives suffer the deadly consequences of smoking.

So when the Keyser High School student was chosen to represent the Eastern Panhandle in the Miss Teen West Virginia pageant, she decided the prevention of pre-teen smoking would be the cause she would promote as her platform.

“It’s a serious issue among teens today,” she said recently, following one of her many presentations to middle school students throughout Mineral County.

“When teenagers start smoking so early, it can cause serious health-related illnesses.”

Speaking to the eighth grade physical education students at Keyser Primary-Middle School Wednesday, Nelson said smoking is “one of the largest contributing factors to undermining teens’ health.

She noted that “the next generation of smokers” have many reasons for starting the habit, including feeling lonely, thinking they look more grown up when they smoke, trying to forget their problems or to hurt their parents, or trying to “look cool” in the eyes of older teens.

“But smoking is no joke, and it’s not cool at all,” she said, adding that some 300,000 pre-teens start smoking each year and over 400,000 Americans die from tobacco-related illnesses in the same period of time.

Nelson told the teens that tobacco is not the only health hazard contained in cigarettes; there is also a long list of chemicals, including formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, acetone, ammonia and hydrazine, among others.

“That is what you’re inhaling into your lungs when you smoke, and it’s poisoning your whole body,” she said.

To demonstrate the dire effects smoking has on a person’s lung capacity, Nelson had 10 volunteers from the audience breathe through a plastic straw.

“It’s pretty easy, isn’t it?” she asked.

She then had them do 25 jumping jacks and try to breathe through the straw again.

The teenagers found the straws — like a smoker’s lungs that are clogged with nicotine — did not provide enough oxygen for their bodies.

She suggested the teens resist the temptation to fall under the influence of tobacco and instead seek out healthy activities.

“Do the things that make you happy and feel good about yourself,” she said.

To close her program, Nelson sang “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from “Phantom of the Opera,” in memory of those loved ones who had lost their lives to tobacco-related illnesses.

Nelson, 16, was crowned Miss Teen Eastern Panhandle in October in Moorefield, and will compete for the title of Miss Teen West Virginia in June.

She is the daughter of Ladonnia and Joseph Nelson of Keyser.

Liz Beavers can be reached at lbeavers@times-news.com.