Since the Paris attacks, some high schools have allowed students to smoke in the courtyard for fear that they will become targets. A practice however prohibited.
Should we establish smoking areas in high school yards, or force high school students to go out to smoke their cigarettes? The debate has agitated education, anti-tobacco associations and police unions for months. And the return to school is far from appeasing it.
The main organizations representing the management staff of high schools and police commissioners, the SNPDEN and the SCPN, approached parliamentarians in order to be able to derogate from the Evin law during the period of the state of emergency. “Indeed, it assumes that there are no gatherings in front of schools but the Public Health Code prohibits keeping students smoking in the secure enclosure of the school, explain the unions in a statement. Consequently, these pupils, and those who accompany them, exercise their right to leave and find themselves, obviously, exposed to a risk of attack of which the tragedy of Nice suggests what it could be ”.
Defy the ban
After the Paris attacks, the Ministry of Education had indicated to principals that the establishment of dedicated restricted spaces in playgrounds could be tolerated. But faced with the reaction of anti-tobacco associations and the Ministry of Health, Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem had backed down.
To solve the problem, the Ministry of Education and anti-smoking associations have proposed that students stay in the school grounds all day without smoking. Impossible, for school leaders, who stress that high school students are not used to watching their actions. In addition, from the end of the year, many students are adults.
Does this mean that high schools are abandoning smoking prevention? Outside or inside, nearly one in three 17-year-old teenagers smokes daily, according to the Escapad survey of the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction. A proportion practically unchanged for 10 years. Consequently, the principals, supported by the associations of parents of pupils, prefer to put the priority on the safety of the pupils.
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