Teens enjoying the sunshine Thursday in the smoke pit near Fountain Park Pool shared a puff or two with their friends and openly discussed their nicotine habit as they pooh-poohed the idea anti-smoking campaigns work.
“Everyone smokes Lucky Strike cigarettes,” said Jeffrey Runnalls, 16, a student at Outreach High School. “All my friends smoke and most have been smoking since Grade 7 or 8. I bet there’s 100 kids out smoking here every day.”
A Health Canada survey that was conducted in 2010 and released this week shows that 17 per cent of Alberta teens aged 15 to 17 smoked. That’s up five per cent from the previous year, when 12 per cent of Albertan teens said they smoked cigarettes.
The Canadian Tobacco Use survey also showed Albertan youths bucked the national trend, where only 12 per cent of teens 15 to 17 years old admitted to being smokers.
The local teens agreed several of their peers do smoke, but they were as perplexed as everyone else as to why.
