Student Activism Takes Up Anti-Smoking

For the first time in the history of tobacco control in the country, a student-led initiative is pioneering a campus-oriented anti-smoking advocacy.

In a competition called UP IN SMOKE, the UP College of Business Administration (CBA) Student Council staged the first Anti-Smoking Communications Campaign Competition in the campus, marking the council’s response to the universally urgent call to action to combat tobacco abuse among the youth.

“As the CBA student body has been commended for excellence in marketing and advertising, we challenged the students to develop a communications campaign to effectively deter fellow UP students from taking up the fatal habit of smoking,” said Petrus Carbonell, Chairperson of the CBA Council.

“It is the youth telling the youth to stop smoking, as a friend lends advice to a friend,” added Luis Lee, one of the project heads of UP IN SMOKE and an officer of the CBA Student Council (BAC).

The contest produced 16 anti-tobacco campaign entries, submitted by 16 groups comprised of five members each. The top four entries will be presented to the Department of Health and will also be proposed to the local government units mandated to implement the tobacco control laws.

First prize was awarded to the R.I.S.E. UP campaign, submitted by the group called El Conquistadores. The campaign draws on the inherent activism in every UP student to rebel against cigarette smoking as a fatal fad. El Conquistadores is composed of

John Patrick Coloma, Enrique Noel Ebarle, Timothy Humangit, Alfredo Natal, and James Marion Biscarra, all BS Business Administration juniors.

Holy Smokes, the first runner-up, is a campaign called the Wishstick Campaign. It emphasizes all the opportunities vital to a UP student – career, relationship, family – and how smoking takes that away from you.

The other top two entries were those of Yosi Break’s campaign they called Buhay UP, which is all about a lifestyle that tells of how cigarettes distort the image of UP students who are intelligent, talented and vibrant models of youth culture; and of the Adems Affle group with their proposed campaign they called idenDEFY, a movement calling on UP students, as bright and intelligent youth, to see reason and logic behind the detriments of smoking.