Cooper: School smoking ban a good step

FILE - This Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015 file photo shows an ashtray with cigarette butts outside the Oklahoma County Courthouse in Oklahoma City. Researchers found that smokers who switched to special low-nicotine ones wound up smoking less and were more likely to try to quit, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
FILE - This Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015 file photo shows an ashtray with cigarette butts outside the Oklahoma County Courthouse in Oklahoma City. Researchers found that smokers who switched to special low-nicotine ones wound up smoking less and were more likely to try to quit, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Violence is little tolerated in Hamilton County Schools. Weapons, toy or otherwise, result in a suspension. Vending machine soft drinks and snacks are frowned upon. And school lunches apparently were so bad here and across the country that first lady Michelle Obama had to get involved.

But smoking? That's OK for students as long as it's outside and after school and not on public seating areas.

Dr. Valerie Boaz, a health officer at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department, told Hamilton County school board members Thursday night that ought to change.

She suggested the schools adopt a campuswide smoking ban, and we believe that's a reasonable request.

According to the Hamilton County Schools website, the mission of its coordinated school health program "is to improve students' health and their capacity to learn through the support of families, communities and schools."

Surely, most families don't condone smoking by their children. Certainly, communities - such as the recent initiative by Hamilton County Major Jim Coppinger and 10 other Hamilton County mayors to discourage smoking in public places - are against it. And by implementing a smoking ban, the school district can say it fully supports the mission of its coordinated health program.

Thankfully, cigarette smoking declined to 2.5 percent of middle school students in the U.S. (from 4.3 percent) and 9.2 percent of high school students (from 15.8 percent) from 2011 to 2014, but nearly 25 out of 100 high school students and nearly 8 out of 100 middle school students used some type of tobacco product in 2014.

That's still too many, because, if the current rates don't drop, the Centers for Disease Control estimates 5.6 million of today's youth under age 18 will die prematurely from a smoking-related illness.

The Hamilton County Schools tobacco policy is nine years old and probably reflects the policy at many school districts, especially in the South, where the rate of smoking for the whole population is higher.

But Boaz said since nine out of 10 smokers begin the habit before the age of 18, having a smoke-free campus would provide a good example. It also might be an incentive for still-puffing school staff members - and maybe some parents - to quit.

School board members made no comment about the proposal and did not say whether the district's current policy might be revised, but we hope they will act upon it.

Students and staff members will smoke away from school if they so choose, but we believe it's reasonable for an institute of learning to put into practice what it preaches.

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