Tobacco Abuse Prevention

On March 27, we had Ms Sima Patel from Toronto Public Health who came to speak with us about Tobacco Abuse Prevention.

First, everyone sat around a circle and we started playing an ice-breaker game to help us get to know one another better. The rule of the game was that person who was in the middle of the circle would say their name and one thing that they like to do, or one thing that they have. If someone else has that thing in common, they would have to move to another seat. The person left without a seat would have to stand in the middle and the game continues. We got to know a lot more about one another in the next 10 minutes.


Ms Sima Patel was leading us to play games

Next, the speaker put out a big wheel which says different types of questions that we were going to answer. The questions were on colour-coded cards placed on the table. There were so many cards, which had all kinds of questions about Tobacco Abuse Prevention. We were told to divide ourselves into two teams for answering random questions as a contest. Everyone took turns to turn the wheel to pick our questions, and if the team couldn’t figure out the answer, we wouldn’t get the points, so the other team has a chance to answer the questions.




JiaJia was spinning the wheel

We learnt much from this interesting game! I learnt that smoking any kind of tobacco products, which include cigarettes, light cigarettes, menthol cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and hookahs are all bad for our health! Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States. It also causes many different cancers, chronic lung diseases such as emphysema and bronchitis, heart disease, pregnancy-related problems, and many other serious health problems. Unfortunately, 6.4 million of today's young people will die from tobacco-related diseases. We also learnt that nearly all first-time tobacco use occurs before high school graduation. that’s a sad statistic!

Finally, Ms Patel handed out some water bottles, which were from IntoHealth.ca. Thank, Ms Patel, for giving us the nice and useful bottles. I am also grateful because I learnt so much from her, especially about the disadvantages of smoking, and how bad tobacco use can be.

Jiemin was holding the wheel

Prevention of tobacco abuse is pretty important in protecting our health. Let’s tell more people to reject tobacco use and never try them!

Written by: Jessica Wang

Edited by: Lynda Young
Posted by: Jessica Wang