75 European health organizations are sending an open letter to the Minister of Education to support her in her desire to ban smoking in high schools.
Seventy-five European health organizations sent a few days ago a open letter to Mrs Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. The aim of this unprecedented approach is to support the Minister of National Education in her dual approach to protecting students against the risk of attack and against smoking.
They therefore invite the French government to maintain a strict ban on smoking inside all schools. To avoid crowds in front of high schools, some French principals have just allowed students to smoke in the courtyard.
But the signatories of the letter recall that France is now considered a model in its tobacco control “because of the recent decisions on the fight against smoking adopted as part of the national program to reduce smoking and the health law. “.
By obviously referring to the establishment of the neutral package in France since May, these activists believe that all this work “could be undermined in the event of the reintroduction of smoking in high schools”. A measure which, according to them, “would be the symbol of a major setback”.
French teens took it easy
Representing the diversity of players involved in the fight against smoking in Europe, these structures sound the alarm against the dangers of a possible exemption from the ban on smoking in French high schools. This is all the more so since the latest edition of the Espad survey (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs), conducted in April and June 2015 among 15-16 year-old pupils from 34 European countries, showed that it is possible to obtain positive results against smoking among young people, “provided that coherent policies are implemented and the regulations which are considered and adapted” are observed, they point out.
For France, this survey shows that 23% of high school students smoke at least one cigarette per day, whereas they were 31% in 2011. Same trend for recent use (at least once in the last 30 days) which now concerns 26% of adolescents, compared to 44% in 1999 and 28% in 2011.
700,000 deaths per year in Europe
These associations therefore invite the government to accompany the principals responsible for avoiding outside crowds during interclasses, while not allowing smoking in the premises of the establishment. And for the skeptics, they write ironically: “If travelers on a transatlantic flight can go 8 to 10 hours without smoking, it is possible to help our high school students to control, even to free themselves from their tobacco consumption”. Young tobacco addicts will appreciate …
As a reminder, 700,000 citizens of the European Union die each year from tobacco. This substance is also the only one that prematurely kills one in two regular users.
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