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In 2002, 36% of South Carolina high school students smoked, and 11,000 teens began smoking every year. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (ACDHEC) designated money from tobacco lawsuit settlements to fund tobacco-use prevention activities throughout the state, and contracted a local firm, Brains on Fire, to develop a program.

The Brains on Fire consultants held pizza-and-brainstorming sessions with South Carolina teens to create an anti-smoking movement. The teens named their program “Rage Against the Haze” to identify how they felt (“Rage”) about advertising and social pressure that encourages smoking (“Haze”). The teens then determined their group purpose, and devised a Mission Statement:

• “To empower teens with self-confidence and knowledge so they might become the influencers of their generation, spreading the anti-tobacco use message, peer to peer, throughout South Carolina, much like a virus would spread.”

The Brains on Fire consultants continued in an advisory and oversight role, arranged Rage Against the Haze events and held teen recruitment and training sessions to help expand the program and monitor progress.