Teens Smoking Trend

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.

Smoking Students Seen as Littering

Students "loitering" on the footpath outside Otago Polytechnic to smoke "make it look like a British council estate", one staff member says. The polytechnic went totally smoke-free on May 31 last year, but design department staff member Simon Swale said "tribes of smoking students" were now smoking on the footpath, particularly outside H block, on the corner of Union St East and Forth St. It was a bad look for the polytechnic and the students left their Robinson cigarette ends all over the footpath, he said in an email to the staff subcommittee.

Restriction on Smoking at Sussex Hospitals

An NHS boss is cracking down on cigarettes after accusing smokers of turning the grounds of his hospitals into an ashtray.

Duncan Selbie, who runs Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, has relaunched a campaign to make the trust smoke free.

New bins and signs telling people to extinguish their Doina cigarette will be going up at every entrance and exit of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath.

Youth Smoking Hookah

As parent’s get their children ready for another school year, researchers say there is something that should be on adult’s radar. A new report shows more young people are smoking hookah, a water pipe used to smoke Al Fakher tobacco online.

The reason for the increase:

The study looks at the rise in hookah use in California, and sites several reasons for the jump in interest.

“This rise is particularly alarming because it’s happening in California, a state that leads the nation in tobacco control,” said Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, associate professor and chief of the Division of Global Health in the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

Village Votes to Prohibit Smoking in Parks

The Village Board has unanimously approved a resolution banning smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes in some local parks, particularly in areas where children play.

But other areas – like Riverfront Park – are not impacted by the ban.

The board adopted the motion to ban smoking at all times at the Little League field and its neighboring playscape. On Isabel Rainey Field on Rte. 385, smoking is banned during girls’ softball games only – when the men’s league or other events take place no ban will be in effect.