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Smokeless Schools
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Published: August 1, 2008
All North Carolina public schools go smokeless today, and that means even Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools now have entirely smoke-free policies. It's about time.
Over the past several years, North Carolina public-school systems have adopted policies banning smoking and the use of tobacco products at school and at school-related events. Locally, the school board had resisted taking such action.
But state law required local anti-tobacco policies by Aug. 1. So, our schools had to adopt such a policy. They did so with a month to spare, starting July 1.
From a political, cultural and economic perspective, the board's reluctance to act is understandable. Winston-Salem was built, in large measure, on the manufacture of cigarettes. Forsyth and surrounding counties harvested a lot of tobacco over the decades. The board was being sensitive to the people who have made their livelihoods through these products.
From a public-health standpoint, however, the school board's failure to act was not defensible. As Gina Humble, the county health department's coordinator of the youth tobacco-prevention program, wrote a while back in the Journal, one-third of all students in the Triad are regular tobacco users by the time they graduate from high school, and one third of them will die prematurely from a smoking-related disease.
Dr. John G. Spangler, a professor of family medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, added to the debate by noting that, in tobacco-free schools, students are 40 percent less likely to smoke.
Those two statistics make perfect bookends to the debate. Too many children are smoking and, when parents and educators set the right example by taking tobacco out of school activities, fewer students smoke.
The Journal has long said that smoking is an adult decision. It should remain so. Children should not be allowed to buy cigarettes, and state law forbids them to do so. Children also should not be exposed to positive images of smoking. Popular culture should not glorify the puffing of a cigarette.
But the purveyors of popular culture had a good rejoinder when they were criticized for having glamorous stars light up in front of the camera: Look at the schools.
How can we expect Hollywood to get cigarettes off movie sets, for example, when schools allow teachers, principals and bus drivers to smoke or chew on campus? We can't.
Now in North Carolina, all school systems have policies setting the limits on tobacco use. Students won't be getting the mixed message that tobacco use is harmful while also seeing the adults at school events inhaling.
This is a good development for North Carolina and the local schools. It's also an example for the rest of the country.
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