BLAST away to smoke-free living
Shannon LeClairStrathmore Reporter
The Alberta Lung Association has a BLAST program which is designed to challenge youth to rethink the temptation to starting smoking. BLAST stands for Building Leadership for Action in Schools Today. The program is aimed at students from Grades 7 to 9.
The Grade 9 health class at Standard school took part in the campaign and entered the contest hosted by BLAST.
“The students in the Grade 9 class here went out and took pictures,” said teacher Tiffany Phillips.
“So we found the areas that had cigarette butts on the ground or cigarette packages and we took pictures.”
The photo contest ran from Sept. 15 to Oct. 30, and entries from all over the province were submitted. The contest is designed to help raise awareness in Alberta about the negative effects of tobacco use, and BLAST feels that students creating things to counter the market trying to get people to smoke, may help them take on a meaningful role as an advocate for change.
“We signed up and put our entries in. We put in five entries and it was out of 150 entries and one of ours won,” said Phillips.
The students had seven categories to choose from, with the main focus being to critique smoking instead of making it look glamorous.
The winning photo, submitted by Phillip’s students, was a little cigarette butt on the ground. It said ‘it may take up to 15 years for one cigarette butt to decompose.’
This year marked the first ever photo contest put on by the Lung Association. Because tobacco products are illegal for minors, all of the photos were to be taken using staged materials.
The class got $500 to spend on an activity, and the school received a grant for $5,000. The grant is to promote healthy lifestyles and promote anti-smoking in our youth.