What is your reason for being smoke-free? - Lethbridge Campus Media

What is your reason for being smoke-free?

Lyndsay Montina works with the Canadian Cancer Society and is the chair of the Lethbridge and area Tobacco Reduction Coalition. The coalition is made up of Alberta Health Services and members of the community.
“This program was funded by Health Care Services through an ADDAC grant,” says Montina.

The project functions year-round, working within communities and promoting people and events to go ‘smoke-free.’
“We want to start a dialogue with students and get them thinking about taking part in advocating for smoke-free environments or just to think about tobacco and the effects that it has. We just wanted to be top-of-mind and start a conversation.”
Local events the group hopes to work alongside this year include the family events such as Whoop-Up days, the Lethbridge Rotary dragon boat festival, Canada Day celebrations and the Alberta International Air-Show.
The group hopes to help find ways for these events to have designated smoking areas or prohibit smoking altogether.
“We’re hoping that at least we can help set up some kind of policies so that the events are completely smoke-free or the events have designated smoking areas, because right now I’m not really sure what they are doing in terms of smoking policies. ”
In observance of National Non-Smoking Week, the group campaigned for people to think of their personal reasons to live smoke-free. Both initiatives coincidentally had a similar theme.
“We wanted to know what student’s reason was to live smoke-free or if they are thinking of quitting or if they want to advocate,” says Lyndsay Montina.
“We decided we wanted to target students before that [theme for National Non-Smoking Week] came out. We tried to then wrap it all in and it just worked out really well.”
Montina and other representatives from the Alberta project were at the college last week talking to students and staff and handing out cookies, water bottles and quit-smoking kits, packed with helpful tips and information, a toothbrush and a toy for a quitting smoker to keep their hands busy.
Montina also mentioned a free quit-smoking program run by Alberta Health Services called Quit Core. The program consists of eight 90-minute sessions that run over 14 weeks and is available in nine Alberta cities including Lethbridge.
For more information on the sessions visit www.quitcore.ca. For more information on the Tobacco Reduction Coalition visit www.tobaccoreduction.ca.
National Non-Smoking Week (NNSW) has been observed for more than 30 years in Canada and is one of the longest running events focused on public health education. Visit their website www.nnsw.ca for more information.

Copyright © 2024. All Rights Reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced without written consent. Please contact digitalcomm@lethpolytech.ca for more information. We encourage all readers to share their comments on our stories, photos, video, audio, blogs, columns and opinion pieces. Due to the nature of the academic program, comments will be moderated and will not be published if they contain personal attacks, threats of violence, spam or abuse. Please visit our editorial policy page for more information.
Related Posts