Common sense needed in Bayside smoking solution - Belleville .

Dr. Richard Schabas, the region's medical officer of health, told the board's monthly meeting Wednesday smoking on Bayside Secondary School property must end by September or both the school and smokers could face fines.

Schabas noted the school's designated smoking area violates the Smoke Free Ontario Act. He said he's informed the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board a resolution must be found by the beginning of the following school year or smokers will be issued tickets, as will the train if it has authorized smoking on school grounds.

While we salute Schabas and the health board for its application in trying to pass a killer habit from the lives of new people, in this subject we give to enquire if diligence hasn't overrun good sense.

Currently, the only off-site rank for Bayside students to smoke is the shoulder of Highway 2, where they - quite rightly - tend to get run off by police. Thus the answer by the school was to afford students someplace to smoke where they won't die, at least not immediately.

Now they want to see another solution. Kerry Donnell, the school board's communications officer, said the effect is complex, but the room is addressing it.

"We have the number of students smoking on school property very badly and we are completely committed to making Bayside Secondary a smoke-free school," Donnell said. "More discussions have to make home with the key parties involved - the health unit, the police, the school."

Schabas, however, doesn't seem all that concerned.

"We're passing to start enforcing the act rigourously," Schabas said. "If there's no good home to smoke then students are not going to be capable to smoke - and that's not going to break my heart, actually."

Well actually, if there is no good home for students to smoke, they are but as probable to grass in insecure places, like next to a busy highway.

And while smoking has good health consequences, none of them are as desperate as getting smacked by a Chevy going 80 kilometres per hour, although it is hard to smoke when you are no longer breathing.

We are encouraged by the school's approach to go with all parties involved to get a good solution and quite appalled that the man responsible for the wellness of all people in our community would be so cavalier about the lives of about of our young people.

Advertisement