The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Ten years from now, Flin Flonners will look back on the school board's recent vote to ban smoking on school grounds and wonder what took so long. That's not to take anything away from the trustees, as a good debate was certainly required to reach this point. The big fear with a smoking prohibition has always been that teens will simply take the habit off school property and cause a mess/disturbance for nearby homeowners. That's what happened when Hapnot Collegiate temporarily banished its "smoking pit" several years back. There are also fire hazard concerns if students start lighting up in the brush surrounding Hapnot and Many Faces Education Centre, which also has a designated smoking area. Despite these issues, the board has rightly decided that smoking will be snuffed out on school property effective February 4, 2008. That gives trustees and administrators more than three months to formulate a plan to deal with the potential side effects. They would be well advised to consider a policy forbidding students from leaving the property during school hours. That would alleviate the aforementioned concerns, at least during school hours. It would also make smoking more of a hassle and, hopefully, prompt more teens to butt out. Of course there is a chance the ban will have the forbidden-fruit effect of making smoking seem more rebellious and, by extension, more appealing to impressionable teens. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for stigmatization. In 1965, when you could smoke virtually anywhere you wanted, half of Canadians did so. Today that number hovers around 20 per cent. Smoking doesn't have the mystique it once did. That's largely because there aren't a whole lot of places where it is still permitted. Out of sight and out of mind, smoking has become anti-social as those dwindling groups of poor souls congregate outside for their nicotine fix. By allowing smoking on its property all these years, the school division was not encouraging smoking, but it may have inadvertently helped the habit maintain whatever normalcy it has left. Moreover, smoking areas make it that much easier for teens to fall prey to tobacco addiction. At a vulnerable time in their lives, smoking is often viewed as a way to fit in or escape the pressures of growing up. The fewer opportunities they have to light up, especially while they're surrounded by peer pressure, the better. A division-wide smoking ban was an absolute must. As for the problems that may result, those can be dealt with firmly as they come up. Local Angle runs Fridays.
