E-cigarettes are set to soon be banned on school property.
Image Credit: Wiki Commons
April 25, 2014 - 12:45 PM
KAMLOOPS — School District 73 has had a smoke free policy for a number of years and next month administration hopes a few changes to the policy will help keep electronic cigarettes, commonly known as e-cigarettes, off school property as well.
“We’ve taken advice from various health agencies and they’re not recommending the use of those products,” Assistant Superintendent Karl de Bruijn says. “They’re not safe and some have addictive qualities.”
He notes while they have begun to see the use of the electronic smoking devices by students the changes are mostly proactive.
“We’ve had principals observing and they have noticed some increase in use,” de Bruijn says. “Smoking areas are moved off of school grounds but are still in close enough proximity to help monitor and keep safe. We don’t want them to smoke, but if they do we want to keep it safer.”
De Bruijn says legislation means smoking areas cannot be on school district property but because of problems with things like drugs decided to accept smoking areas that were close enough to the school to be monitored.
The policy changes are set to be adopted at a May 12 public meeting and feature new wording to include electronic smoking products in addition to tobacco products as well as a change to include ‘The board's goal is to assist in the creation of a society that is smoke-free and free from electronic smoking products’ instead of simpler term, ‘creation of a smoke-free society.’
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