Leswalt Primary pupils left the school with huge smiles on their faces today, after each being gifted a chocolate advent calendar from the Leswalt Community Association. They are all super excited to be allowed to have chocolate as part of their breakfast every day in December! A huge thank-you to LCA for their generosity!
P6-7 were joined by Rebecca from the NHS Tobacco team this morning, to learn all about the dangers of smoking and vaping. Rebecca’s job is to work with people who are ill from the effects of smoking/vaping, but also to try and prevent people from starting smoking/vaping to begin with.
We learned that the legal age to buy cigarettes/vapes will rise to 19 years old next year, 20 years old the following year, and so on so that it will eventually be illegal for everyone to smoke. We discussed the physical effects of smoking, as well as the effects on your bank balance! We learned that nicotine is more addictive than some drugs and how it affects the brain. We did an activity where we had to run/jump on the spot for 20 seconds, we then repeated this but had to doing it breathing through a small straw to show how hard it is for smokers to breath doing anything active.
Finally, we learned about the environmental impact of smoking – on average, there are 50 bin lorries of cigarette ends disposed of each year. In 2022, there was the equivalent of 22 football pitches worth of vapes disposed of.
Rebecca encouraged pupils to share her team’s information with anyone at home who smokes and is keen to quit – they can email dg.quityourway@nhs.scot
Thank-you to Rebecca for travelling to Leswalt for a very informative morning!
