BROWN RIBBON
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The School District, along with support from the Palm Beach County Department of Health, the Palm Beach County Substance Abuse Coalition, the Tobacco-Free Partnership, and the Everglades Area Health Education Center (AHEC), confronts youth tobacco use by supporting April 2012 as Brown Ribbon Month.
Brown Ribbon Month is a prevention project designed to:
1. promote awareness of tobacco’s negative effects;
2. help students make a lifelong commitment to their own
good health; and
3. prevent the use of tobacco products.
Brown Ribbon Month educates young people about the effects of tobacco by using prevention education activities that can be integrated into existing academic curricula. Many children have parents who smoke.
The activities will not focus on smokers or teach children that smokers are bad. The message is a positive one, encouraging young people to look at the facts and then make the right decision when faced with deciding to smoke or not to smoke.
Tobacco Use Statistics
High school students who smoke in Palm Beach County - 2010 FL Youth Tobacco Survey |
13%(statewide 13.1%) |
High school students who use smokeless or spit tobacco - 2010 FL Youth Tobacco Survey |
20.5%(statewide 22.2%) |
Middle school students in PBC who have never smoked and say they won't - 2010 FL Youth Tobacco Survey |
70.5% (statewide 68.6%) |
High school students in PBC who have never smoked and say they won't - 2010 FL Youth Tobacco Survey |
50.9% (statewide 55.4%) |
Floridians who die each year as a result of tobacco use |
29,000 |
| Around the world, the number of adults who die each year as a result of toabacco use | 3.5 million |
Tobacco use by our students interferes
with their academic achievement.
“Smoking is often associated with poor school performance,
low aspirations, alcohol and other drug use, school absences,
and anticipated dropping out. Nicotine is frequently the first substance of abuse used by children and youth. Those who use
it are 15 times more likely to progress to other drug use than those who have never smoked”
(Committee on Substance Abuse, “Tobacco’s Toll:
Implications for the Pediatrician.” Pediatrics, 107.4 (2001) p. 794-795.
The nicotine in tobacco poses a significant danger of causing changes in developing brains that can make teenagers more vulnerable to alcohol, other drug addiction and mental illness
(The National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2007).
Contact Information:
Student Intervention ServicesTelephone: (561) 366-6959 or PX 76959Fax: (561) 366-6961 or PX 76961 |
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