Pam Laffin started smoking when she was 10. By the time she was 24, she had emphysema.
At 25, she had a lung transplant.The Boston woman is featured in the new Tobacco Prevention and Cessation campaign, sponsored by the Utah Department of Health, and running on radio, television and in newspapers throughout the state.
Laffin, whose body is now rejecting her new lung, was scheduled to visit Utah schools this week. Because she is undergoing radiation therapy and is weak, she can't leave the Boston area.
But her ads have already begun to air. Laffin can now be heard on radio spots, telling the 27,000 Utah teens who smoke that more than 75 percent of them will still be smoking in eight years.
Laffin says she started smoking alone in her father's basement after she watched the movie "Grease." She tried to quit six times unsuccessfully. It wasn't until she found out the seriousness of her illness that she was able to quit.
In the more than two years since her lung transplant, Laffin has toured schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire telling children about the realities of tobacco.
Those include:
* 90 percent of smokers started as teens.
* The average youth smoker smokes 12 cigarettes a day.
* One-third of teens who start smoking will die from it.
* Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more people than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides, drugs, suicides and fires combined.
The 28-year-old is a mother of two and now unable to work because of her condition. She says she's not trying to tell teens what to do, she just wants them to know the facts.
"If you're going to think about smoking, consider what it is you are giving up, what you're going to do to your body," Laffin said.
Laffin also has an anti-smoking web site at (www.autonomy.com/smoke.html).