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Emboldened by their recent success in getting merchants along Telegraph Avenue to take down 30 percent or more of their tobacco advertisements, a group of Willard Middle-schoolers took their anti-tobacco campaign a step further Tuesday, asking merchants to put up anti-tobacco posters in place of the advertisements. 

It’s all part of 12-week anti-tobacco, after-school program led by Sandra Meucci, a sociologist, volunteer Marcus Bouligny, and some students from a class Meucci teaches at UC Berkeley on tobacco and culture. 

In its second year, Meucci said the program, which meets Tuesday afternoons, aims to go beyond traditional anti-smoking messages delivered to youth. Meucci begins by educating students about the dangers of tobacco, but then she helps them internalize the message by involving them in a campaign against tobacco in their own community. 

“My strategy is to get them to be part of a social movement,” Meucci said. “If they see it as something where they are being a consumer of an industry they don’t like, then they’re much less likely to buy the product.” 

Meucci said it is particularly important to get the anti-tobacco message across to middle school-aged kids, who are likely to experiment with smoking and could become addicted if they do. 

“This is the age of initiation right here,” Meucci said Tuesday, surveying the Willard Middle School students. “Twelve and 13 years old is where we first see kids experimenting.” 

Although teen smoking rates are down considerably from 15 years ago, they have begun inching up again in recent years, Meucci said. The 18 to 24 age group in particular is bucking the national trend of lower smoking rates, Meucci added. Thirty-eight percent of 18 to 24 year olds smoke, compared to 20 percent of the adult population, she said. 

The Willard Middle School students have visited seven stores to date along Telegraph Avenue. They’ve had notable success in getting merchants to remove tobacco ads. 

“I’m always shocked by the merchants’ reaction to us in terms of being supportive,” Bouligny said. “Most of the merchants just started taking stuff down right there.” 

The shift manager of Berkeley Market, on Telegraph Avenue near Dwight Way, who would give his name only as Mohammed, said he was sympathetic to the students’ cause. 

“It does have an impact,” he said of the tobacco ads. “It’s like a TV commercial. Particularly in American culture. People, what they see, they buy.” 

Kamal Ayyad, owner of Fred’s Market, on Telegraph, removed a large Camel placard from the wall above his cigarette shelf in response to the students requests. 

“The kids did their homework, so I tried to help them out,” Ayyad said. “I’m happy to take it down anyway. I want the kids to feel good and I want to be part of the community.” 

Some may be more earnest than others in their support of the students, Meucci said, after discovering Tuesday that the Berkeley Market had apparently put a tobacco ad back up after the students’ last visit. 

“What we’ve learned is you really have to be vigilant,” Meucci said. She said merchants are sometimes pressured by tobacco distributors to put up ads for their products. 

“There is a strong bias in this country is favor of looking at advertising as free speech,” she added. 

UC Berkeley Student George Martinez, one of the student mentors in the afterschool program, said educating Willard students is the bottomline for the program. 

“We’re mostly educating the kids about tobacco and letting them know that it’s not necessarily as edgy and cool as the media portrays it,” Martinez said.  

They’re preaching to the choir with Willard sixth grader Ashley Hilliard. Asked why she doesn’t smoke, Hilliard said: “I thought it was bad for my health – and it looks nasty!”