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Punishment makes teens talk of town Girls made to carry sign: "Ain't I a butt?" Thursday, January 11, 2001 By Johnna A. Pro, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When Charlene Ours picked up her local paper yesterday, she was shocked to see a story and photos detailing how her 12-year-old daughter and three friends were being punished by their families for smoking.
By day's end, Ours was simply aggravated that what started out as an attempt to teach the teens a lesson -- by making them stand outside and hold signs that read, "I got caught smoking. Ain't I a butt?" -- instead had given them a measure of celebrity in the Beaver County town of New Brighton.
"She called me screaming, 'I'm famous,' " Ours said of her daughter, Holly. "They think it's funny. They think it's a joke."
Holly and her pals, Diana Monac, 15, Savannah Monac, 14, and Jessica Lincoln, 14, who are all in the same family, are, indeed, the talk of the town.
Tony Monac and Sandi Lincoln dreamed up the punishment for their girls ordering them to stand outside the New Brighton Middle School for three hours last Sunday and on the next three Sundays holding the lime-green signs that included their ages.
Ours initially agreed to the punishment, thinking a little public humiliation wouldn't hurt. But now she believes the plan to embarrass the girls has backfired.
"It's an embarrassment to me," said Ours, who smokes. "It's way out of hand. It's not helping them."
The girls' story began last Friday when Holly wrote a note to the others about wanting a cigarette and plotting a way to go buy some.
There were two problems, though.
For more information about Kick Butts Day or other stop smoking programs for teens, look at the Web site www.tobaccofree
Holly couldn't spell the word cigarette, so instead, she wrote, "I need a _____," and "We can go buy some _____.
Then Jessica dropped the note at home.
When Monac and Lincoln found it, they were immediately suspicious.
"As a parent, I'm thinking [they were talking about] a joint or weed," Monac said.
The couple separated the girls and talked to them individually and found out that drugs weren't in the girls plans, but cigarettes were.
In fact, all have been smoking for a while.
It was Savannah, the acknowledged leader of the pack, who began smoking last year and eventually persuaded the others to do so as well.
"What Savannah does, they all do," Lincoln said.
The girls get cigarettes from friends, and, if they can pool together enough money, go so far as to ask strangers going into stores to buy them for them. They even pick them out of the ashtrays.
Monac and Lincoln were livid. And they smoke.
Monac first forced the girls to smoke one cigarette after another. Jessica got sick. Then each girl wrote a 100- word essay about the evils of smoking.
Monac still felt they deserved more punishment and Lincoln's plan -- which she remembered hearing about on the Maury Povich show -- seemed reasonable.
As far as the girls were concerned, it was. It was either that or one month of being grounded. And as the girls pointed out, 30 days in the world of a teen is akin to a life sentence.
"I'd rather be standing on the corner for three hours than stuck in the house for 30 days," Diana said, winning murmurs of agreement from all the group.
Lincoln called Ours, who wasn't surprised to hear about what happened because Holly had admitted to her weeks earlier that she had been smoking.
And while Ours didn't approve of what her daughter was doing, at that time she held her tongue,
"I can say, 'You know that's bad for you,' and they can hear me wheeze," she said. "I didn't say anything much. I figured it would pass; it was a phase. I wasn't going to get irate. The only thing I hope and pray is that everything I try to instill in her she listens to someday."
Despite her more liberal position, Ours went along with the plan to try and embarrass the girls, hoping such a punishment would make her daughter stop smoking.
Ours contends that what she didn't know until after the fact was that Monac alerted the Beaver County Times. And when she did find out, she didn't expect the story to run on the front page.
Ours now believes she made a mistake agreeing to the plan and said Holly won't be standing outside with her sign any longer. She hopes to come up with another way to persuade her daughter not to smoke.
"They're having a field day with this. This is not punishment," she said.
Lincoln figures it's a case of false bravado.
"Oh, they're more embarrassed than they admit," she said.
But Monac and Lincoln were disappointed and puzzled yesterday when all four girls said they understood the dangers of smoking but intended to do it again when they are old enough. None could explain why.
Victor Colonna, director of Children and Youth Services for Beaver County said that while the punishment was unusual, it was not criminal.
"Is this something I would do to my children? No. Is it something I would recommend? No. It's just old-fashioned parental discipline. I wouldn't do it with my child; that doesn't mean it's not effective or not appropriate."
Nancy Joyce, who runs a smoking cessation program at St. Francis Medical Center, said parents who want their children to stop smoking, or keep them from starting, should focus on education.
"My thought about all of that is that it's just very embarrassing and you should never embarrass people to get them to stop smoking," Joyce said. "I don't think they're going to stop them with this punishment, although the kids now know they mean business."
Joyce believes that most teens smoke largely because of peer pressure and wanting to be like others.
The same method can work in the reverse.
She also believes parents should work with schools to promote anti-smoking programs and to make sure teachers and students have access to current literature and videos about the dangers of smoking.
Parents also shouldn't hesitate to contact their local hospitals to see if their children can speak to people recovering from lung cancer and other smoking- related diseases, she said.
"It is typical for teens to experiment. They don't realize how much of an addiction it can become and how very fast it can become an addiction," she said.
Dr. David C. Pietro, the principal of New Brighton Area Middle School, said that there was much discussion among the faculty yesterday about the girls' punishment.
"[The faculty has] been supportive of the fact that the parents have taken action," Pietro said. "I don't know that I would use that punishment myself, but I certainly appreciate the parents taking a stand."
Students in the district discuss not smoking in seventh-grade health class and in science and social studies classes in other grades.
In addition, the middle school participates in Kick Butts Day, a national event sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. This year it will be held on April 4 in schools nationwide.
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