Split Enz joins fight against smoking

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 12

Split Enz joins fight against smoking

PA Nelson The rock group, Split Enz, features on a poster urging teen-agers not to smoke. The poster, with the message, “join the non-smoking generation,” one of the educational materials in a new resource kit to help teenagers adopt positive lifestyles and avoid health risks, is aimed at Form 111 to V students. The kit was produced by the health resources project team in the Education Department with backing from the National Heart Foundation and the Cancer Society of New Zealand. The new kit will assist efforts in secondary schools

to encourage most of the students who are already non-smokers to maintain that behaviour. A number of smoking intervention resources had already been used in primary schools financially backed by the three organisations. The resource kit will help teachers make clear to students the scientific facts about smoking. Activities and experiments outlined in the kit help students to understand how the heart and lungs work and what long-term detrimental effects smoking has on those parts of the body. Students are also told of the immediate disadvan-

tages of smoking, bad breath, stained hands and teeth, raised blood pressure, and a decline in athletic ability.

Also discussed in the kit is smoking as a social issue, peer pressure, and ways to help students make personal decisions about remaining a non-smoker.

The kit provides materials for schools to build programmes which suit their local conditions, as well as suggestions for setting up a stop-smoking group which could provide opportunities for parent and teachers, as well as students to give up smoking.