From left are new Student Assistance Program educator Jennifer Brown, contest winner Clifton-Fine Central School eighth grader Lydia Kerr, and new Advancing Tobacco Free Communities Coordinator Chelsea Bartlett.

STAR LAKE -- Clifton-Fine students recently created cartoons, posters, songs and more during the annual Great American Smokeout to highlight the negative effects of smoking.

Each year on the third Thursday in November, the American Cancer Society marks the Great American Smokeout (GASO) encouraging smokers to use the date to make a plan to quit.

Reality Check Coordinator Ashley Frank and Community Engagement Coordinator Chelsea Bartlett from the Seaway Valley Prevention Council participated in GASO 2014. The two worked together to help encourage smokers to quit while giving them tips and help in any way necessary.

Chelsea Bartlett, also a part of the Student Assistance Program (SAP) with Jennifer Brown, the new SAP educator at Clifton-Fine Central School, encouraged her students to help raise awareness by hosting a contest.

Clifton-Fine Central School students put together their creative minds and students of all ages came up with poems, pictures, cartoons, posters and wrote songs with some focusing on the negative side effects of smoking while others focused on the benefits quitting has on your health.

The winner of the contest was Lydia Kerr, grade 8, who wrote a poem to help encourage smokers to quit:

“Smoking is to me like suicide.

Did the stress cause you to lose your pride?

Your life is already short, don’t make it shorter.

I will help you quit, I will be your supporter.

You think you’re just hurting yourself, well you’re not!

Those people around you are getting hurt a lot.

It is as bad as death from second hand smoking.

People are dying, wake up, we’re not joking.

Do you want a stroke, how about cancer?

Now listen up: quitting smoking is the answer?”