Peter Debenedittis of the New Mexico Literacy Project gave Eastern students an insight on the negative effects of the media Thursday.

He conducted his presentation in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The program, “Media Literacy for Prevention, Critical Thinking and Self-Esteem,” focused on tobacco companies and how they target their ads to get people to smoke.

Before the speech began, slides of different tobacco ads with musicians, athletes, cartoons, teenagers and celebrities were shown to prove how the companies try to target the youth.

Debenedittis showed many commercials throughout his presentation, including one of a child smoking at the dinner table because he didn’t want to eat his meal.

“The children rebel and then they get what they want,” he said. “How do we get to the point that this is social shorthand?”

Some of the ads that were shown for different products imitated tobacco products.

“They are trying to say, ‘This is how good my product is. It smokes,'” Debenedittis said.

In the middle 1990s, the ABC network informed the public that the Phillip Morris company spiked the amount of nicotine in their cigarettes.

Phillip Morris then threatened to pull their advertising off the network.

They also said they wanted to keep kids away from cigarettes, but in one commercial they show a few girls handing out free packs.

Michelle Norfleet, a freshman psychology major, said, “I was really amazed at everything the ad companies would do to convince a person to smoke.”

Debenedittis said smoking causes the most heart attacks and kills 400,000 Americans each year.

He also shocked the audience with the fact that on Sept. 11, 5,000 people were killed, and it would only take the tobacco companies four days to kill that many.

Some other facts presented were that second-hand smoke kills 53,000 people each year, and the average American “only needs three cigarettes to become addicted.”

Debenedittis also discussed how they make models look perfect in magazines.

“Dresses are clamped in the back to make them fit, curves are added to the women’s bodies and the final pictures are airbrushed,” he said.

Debenedittis ended the speech with an inspirational message to the audience.

“You’re strong and you’re beautiful just the way you are,” he said.