Photo Illustration by Margaret Malloy Corsair

Cigarette Graveyard - Extinguish your butt in the ashtray, for the Great American Smoke-Out on Nov. 20.

"People must understand the importance of discouraging smoking among our kids, they are imposed with smoking adds in liquor stores, billboards, and the cost of treating cigarette related disease is astronomical," said Lovella Mays, Director of Charles Drew Head Start. "It costs less to attack this head on than to treat someone with lung cancer."

California has the second lowest smoking rate among adults at 17.4 percent and the lowest youth smoking rate at 5.9 percent. During the early 1990's, when California tobacco control programs were large and aggressive, smoking rates fell faster than the rest of the United States .