Youths Put Heat on Marlboro Man : Health: Organized by the lung association, Oxnard children protest a tobacco employee promoting cigarettes.

Waving signs and chanting anti-smoking slogans, about 100 Oxnard schoolchildren confronted a stand-in for the Marlboro Man outside a Camarillo convenience store on Friday to protest the use of tobacco.

The stand-in, an employee of tobacco giant Philip Morris USA who identified himself only as Matt, had set up a booth outside the Woodside Deli & Market on the Pleasant Valley Road to offer free lighters, T-shirts and other gifts to people who purchased at least two packs of Marlboro cigarettes.

American Lung Assn. officials said the protest, the first ever organized by the group’s Ventura County chapter, was designed primarily to reinforce to the children that they should never start smoking.

“If one of these kids in this group does not smoke, we’ve served our purpose,” said association spokeswoman Lisa D. Lopez.

But the promotional gimmick was interrupted at about 12:30 p.m. by the protest.

At the association’s urging, officials from the Rio Elementary School District summer school program brought about 100 schoolchildren, many of them dressed in Western-style gear, to protest tobacco use.

The Marlboro Man puffed on a cigarette while the children who had surrounded his booth, chanted slogans such as “Marlboro Man, Leave Town by Sundown,” and waved colorful, homemade signs bearing messages such as “Smoking Stinks.”

After half an hour under siege, the temporary Philip Morris employee--who said he is 25 years old and lives in Thousand Oaks--packed the gifts inside his company van and retreated into the store.

He set up the booth again at about 1:45 p.m. after the children, who had finished school for the day, were gone.

The children, he said, went too far with their protest.

“The kids were poking their signs right at me,” he said.

One smoker who got a free lighter at the Marlboro booth after the protest ended said he believes the children should demonstrate against other health hazards.

Truong Truong, a native of South Vietnam who now lives in Agoura Hills, stopped at the Camarillo market to purchase cigarettes.

Waving toward the agricultural field across the street, he said he wondered why the children don’t protest against pesticide use. “They spray with pesticides out here every day,” he said.

Truong, 45, said he has smoked since he was 15 and is now up to two packs a day.

And Truong indicated that he has no desire to quit. “I just had my lungs X-rayed last week,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Lung association officials agreed that some of the children got a little too enthusiastic before officials pulled them back. They had been advised to stay three feet away from the booth.

“They’re little kids,” Lopez said. “They don’t really know what they’re doing.”

But Lopez and other association officials said the protest was intended to make a public statement in addition to instilling anti-smoking values in young people.

“It draws attention to the fact that Philip Morris, like all the tobacco companies, are relentless and unscrupulous in their attempt to seduce children into cigarettes,” said Jerry Leavitt, the association’s project coordinator for tobacco control programs.

Officials of the New York-based Philip Morris company could not be reached for comment.

But some of the children said they protested less for their own benefit than for other people.

“My mom smokes and that’s why I wanted to come here,” said Tiffany Knight, 8.

“We don’t want no more people to smoke,” added Robert Jimenez, 7.