By: Vanessa S. Holt
BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP The 35 fifth- and sixth-graders in the Peter Muschal Elementary School auditorium performed for an audience of one, state Sen. Robert Singer, R-30th, acting out a scenario in a restaurant where patrons are fed up with secondhand smoke.
The students were not members of a school theater club, they are part of a group called REBEL Reaching Everyone By Exposing Lies a statewide youth anti-smoking campaign supported by the state Department of Health and Senior Services and funded by money from the settlement between tobacco companies and the states.
Sen. Singer came to the school April 10 to talk with the group about legislation introduced in the state Senate in March, the Clean Indoor Air Act. If passed, it would prohibit smoking in enclosed public places, including restaurants, bars and casinos.
Under the legislation, a designated smoking area could be constructed in a building if it was equipped with a ventilation system that would not recirculate the air into the nonsmoking areas in the facility. Smoking would not be prohibited in a building owned and operated by a social, fraternal and religious organization or in a tobacco bar or owner-operated bar.
After the students performed their skit, at tables set up against a painted backdrop of a restaurant window, they talked with the senator about the issues.
"I’m concerned about good health," Sen. Singer told the students. "And smoking is not good for anybody."
According to the REBEL Web site, www.njrebel.com, 38.9 percent of high school students in New Jersey use tobacco, and every day 3,000 teens try a cigarette for the first time.
Sen. Singer told the students several other alarming facts.
"Forty percent of people in hospitals in New Jersey have smoke-related ailments," he said. He noted that he had grown up in a smoking household, during a time when smoke was almost everywhere. "People smoked in elevators, airplanes, cars. It was a way of life. No one thought twice about it."
The PMES group is called REBEL 2, a middle school version of REBEL, which is typically aimed at high school students. Several members said they had joined because they had grown up around smoke and didn’t like it.
"I have asthma, so I can barely go out to restaurants because it’s so smoky," said Alexa Haines, 11, a sixth-grader. "The air just takes the smoke over from the smoking area to the nonsmoking area."
"I just don’t think it’s right," said Caitlin Moynihan, 12, also in sixth grade.
Physical education teacher Mark Housel, the group’s advisor, said membership has grown from about 14 to 35 in the year since the REBEL chapter formed. He said the kids have taken the lead in the group, forming subcommittees to design and perform the anti-smoking skit, and formulating a plan to increase awareness of the dangers of smoking. During after-school sessions, the group learns about the issues through discussion and games.
Mr. Housel shares the students’ concern about the effects of secondhand smoke. "Our right to breathe clean, poison-free air supercedes their right to smoke," he said.
The next challenge the group will tackle is to put together a presentation for the fifth grade and informing their fellow students about the dangers of smoking.
Sen. Singer said the Clean Indoor Air Act will likely be controversial, pitting the rights of the business community against the rights of nonsmokers. He said one solution could be a tax credit for businesses that have to undergo renovations to meet the requirements of the law, installing new ventilation systems or partitions.
"It’s a delicate situation," he told students, explaining that legislators must weigh all sides in considering an issue like this one.

