Everybody knows that smoking ain't allowed in school.

But now, thanks to the teens in two local youth programs, everyone will know where else smoking is strictly off-limits. The students are members of Youth Advocates Promoting Better Health (YAPBH) and Teen Life Challenge (TLC).

The two groups worked together last month to film a public-service announcement promoting the smoke-free tot-lot law. The legislation, which went into effect this year, prohibits smoking within 25 feet of children's playground and sandbox areas. The result of their teamwork can be seen in 30-second spots on MTV and Nickelodeon through the month of June.

"It's a real grass-roots thing," said Mark Loeser, the YAPBH project director. "We had a really good partnership with Teen Life Challenge. We took our resources and their resources and combined them."

The programs brought together their areas of expertise -- tobacco education for YAPBH and TV production for TLC. Teens in YAPBH developed and wrote the commercial, while the members of TLC did the filming and production.

The commercial shows two children playing in sand while their mothers are nearby smoking. The kids are making sand castles out of cigarette butts when two teens walk by and remind the parents of the no-smoking law.

The idea for the commercial started earlier this year when the youth in YAPBH were discussing ways to publicize the new tot-lot law. The tobacco-free youth group regularly participated in health fairs, school programs and other community events. In February, it decided to try to produce a commercial.

The group requested and received a $2,500 grant from the state's Gold Country Tobacco Prevention program for the project. It then set out to write the script.

"I hope people will learn something from it," said Sam Vaughn School sixth-grader Jess Gilmore, who helped write the spot. "Smoking is killing people. I hope they stop smoking around kids."

The group teamed up with Teen Life Challenge once the concept was ready. The students in TLC produce a show by the same name for public-access Channel 2. The half-hour show is run as a part of the group's teen pregnancy prevention platform.

Teens from both programs starred in the commercial. They said working together went smoothly.

"They were really good," said TLC member Chris Mitchell, a sophomore at Modesto High. "Everyone was cooperative."

While being on TV is old hat for the TLC veterans, their peers in YAPBH said being on camera was a challenge.

"I was nervous for the shoot," said La Loma seventh-grader Jennifer Ringer, who played one of the teens who confronts the parents. "But it is exciting to be a part of it."

Filming for the 30-second commercial took six hours of preparation and camera work.

"I thought it would just be a short thing, but we had to do all the different parts at different times," said YAPBH member Ashley Schafer, a Beyer High sophomore. "It was really technical."

The commercial started airing at the end of April and will run through June. While their moment of fame on television will be brief, members of both groups said people do learn something from their appearances.

"I hope they get more information about how smoking affects children," Schafer said. "Smoking is bad for kids, for everyone."

Reprinted by permission of Modesto Bee.