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Anti-smoking
TO-BACC-OFF
Too many young people smoke -- and Jewish Family Services is doing something to help them quit and to make sure those who haven't started don't.
JFS is doing it with an education and prevention program called TO-BACC-OFF, funded by a Health Canada grant and intended as part of an anti-smoking initiative for Montreal high school students.
It's a program for and by students as it's known that student input is crucial to the success of any such program.
Background:
One of the driving forces behind TO-BACC-OFF is Montrealer Kappy Flanders, who lost her husband and mother to lung cancer and her father to emphysema. She has set up the Lung Cancer Community Foundation (LCFF), for which she herself solicits much of the funding, mainly from pharmaceutical companies.
Through the LCCF, Kappy started organizing lung cancer prevention symposia at McGill University. Barbara Victor, Director of JFS School Services, had attended one such symposium, and she and Flanders had started to talk.
Flanders, it turned out, felt strongly about the benefit of a school-based approach to prevent kids from smoking. And so a partnership was born.
The launch of TO-BACC-OFF, sponsored by JFS and Flanders's LCCF, was celebrated in February, when Flanders accompanied more than 1,200 students in TO-BACC-OFF tee shirts to a concert by the rock group Nickelback.
In setting up the program, the two women met with high-school students and their advisers to talk about young people and smoking: What they heard was interesting. The young people said they want smoking off the school campus entirely: That goes for staff and students alike. They want local depanneurs not to have cigarette advertising at kids' eye level. They want education for elementary school children about the importance of not smoking.
The kids suggested that they form groups in their schools and work with an adviser from JFS School Services. They want to get to the younger kids before they start to smoke because they know how difficult it is to stop once they start. They also said they didn't want parents involved in this initiative.