THUNDER BAY -- Students at Bishop Gallagher Elementary School are planning to lock tobacco companies out of their classrooms.
Dozens of teenagers at the north-side school clicked locks onto a fence in front of their school on Thursday, symbolizing their desire to keep students tobacco free for life.
Peter Hannula, a 13-year-old Grade 8 student said the earlier the message is delivered, the likelier it is children won’t start smoking.
“When you start at this age it follows you your whole life. If you’re giving the tobacco industry that advantage, we’re not doing anything for our cause to stop it. They’re just going to get stronger and bigger to prevent it,” the youngster said.
Luckily the message is getting across, and credited the actions of the school’s anti-tobacco efforts as the main reason.
“This program, I believe, has done so much in the school. I have not seen one friend, one classmate, nobody experiment with (tobacco),” he said.
Classmate Nathan Atwill said smoking awareness and tobacco awareness are important tools to fight the lure of smoking.
It’s important that kids not take up the habit, he added.
“If not, it’s tough for you to play sports and to do physical activity,” Nathan said.
“We don’t want tobacco in our school or anywhere near our school.”
Teacher Geri Richardson helped spearhead the effort. Locking out tobacco companies is one of several initiatives the school has undertaken over the past two years as officials ramped up their anti-smoking campaign.
It’s not an easy battle, she added, with tobacco companies doing everything they can to entice younger users to take up what often becomes a lifelong habit. Flavoured tobacco and colourful packaging are just two tactics being employed.
Teens are very impressionable, Richardson said.
But a partnership with students at Queen’s University shows the program is working, with students taking a much different view of tobacco products in the two years it’s been in place.
“They had a measurable increase in the understanding of what people knew about tobacco use,” Richardson said.
“We tried to have students plan every single event we did today, and we probably had seven different initiatives going on at one time.”
Across Ontario, smoking amongst teens is at its lowest rate since 1977, though 14 per cent of teens between Grade 7 and Grade 12 say they smoke every day.
Smoking rates in Northern Ontario have been traditionally higher than the rest of the province.
