Posted on 12/01/2004 5:50:37 PM PST by Lijahsbubbe
Elisa Thorson remembers going to pick up her younger sister at a park in St. Paul Park last summer.
She saw a group of teenagers smoking and hanging out. Thorson's sister turned to her and asked, "Is that what you're supposed to do when your older?"
Thorson doesn't want that scene to play out in Maplewood. The junior at North High School in North St. Paul is joining with seniors Kayla Helkamp and Carolyn Wiger and asking city officials to ban smoking in parks and other outdoor city facilities.
The three teenagers will present a petition and their findings to the city's Parks and Recreation Commission on Dec. 20.
"We don't want those kind of role models in the park," Wiger said. "It's not appropriate."
So far the girls have gathered almost 400 signatures just from their classmates. The group's goal is 500, and the teenagers plan to canvass neighborhoods surrounding Maplewood's parks to find more supporters.
Their plan also includes getting area churches and businesses to write letters of support, and collecting cigarette butts in some of the city's parks to show Maplewood officials that littering also is a problem.
"Some of the butts really haven't been smoked," Helkamp added. "The point is, kids pick them up and try to smoke them."
The North students are part of a growing trend of metro area teenagers pushing for smoking bans in their communities. Students in places like Shoreview and New Brighton have successfully pushed smoke-free park initiatives in their towns.
Some teenagers in White Bear Lake pitched their proposal to the city last week.
According to the Tobacco Free Youth Recreation organization, about 60 cities across the state — including 20 in the metro area — have policies banning tobacco in parks and recreational facilities.
The push for smoke-free parks is just part of what the North teenagers and their peers have been doing to promote tobacco awareness. A couple of weeks ago, they created a display to put out during lunch hours at North. It included a doll in a baby walker with a pyramid of cigarettes in front of her.
A banner pointed out that children who live with a smoker inhale the equivalent of 408 cigarettes from secondhand smoke by the time they turn 1.
Dave Ettesvold, a chemical health specialist in the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale school district, said what these girls are doing is important. About 20 percent of high school students smoke. And younger kids look to these teenagers as role models.
Ettesvold said Helkamp, Thorson and Wiger won't take no for an answer when they try to promote tobacco-free lifestyles. When students weren't coming up to their table in the lunchroom to sign the petition, they went to other lunch tables to rally support.
"It's phenomenal to get a group of young people to do something of this magnitude," he said of the North students. "They're sticking to their guns and moving forward. I can't think of a group of adults that would be more effective."
School: North High School in North St. Paul
Age: 17
Hometown: Maplewood
Accomplishment: Leading a campaign to ban tobacco in Maplewood's parks.
Goal: To become a cop.
ELISA THORSON
School: North High School in North St. Paul
Age: 16
Hometown: North St. Paul Accomplishment: Leading a campaign to ban tobacco in Maplewood's parks.
Goal: Plans to attend college and become a psychologist.
CAROLYN WIGER
School: North High School in North St. Paul
Age: 17
Hometown: North St. Paul
Accomplishment: Leading a campaign to ban tobacco in Maplewood's parks.
GOAL: PLANS TO ATTEND MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY, MANKATO AND BECOME A CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY AND REHAB COUNSELOR. FYI
Cities in the metro area with tobacco-free park and recreational facilities: Anoka, Andover, Brooklyn Center, Champlin, Coon Rapids, Eagan, Eden Prairie, Edina, Golden Valley, Mahtomedi, Maple Grove, New Brighton, Plymouth, Ramsey, Richfield, Roseville, St. Paul, Savage, Shoreview
Puff ping!
I love these self-rightous children of libs. The irony is
they're probably "pro-choice" and don't consider their
own parents to be their personal role models.
You just reminded me of a cuban cigarillo I hid from my mom hehe!
Let's see now . . . life expectancy of male homosexual WITH AIDS = 39 years. Life expectancy of male homosexual WITHOUT AIDS = 41 years. OK, now . . . life expectancey of male smoker (or probably any smoker) = 70+ years. Now, golly! Which life style is the most dangerous to one's health, smoking? or being a male homosexual (with or without AIDS)? Golly, I think the smoking and health Nazis are targeting the wrong group with their harassment.
Shouldn't we be more concerned about the disastrous, alarmingly shortened lifestyle of the male homosexuals rather than people who smoke? What am I missing? [the preceding was all rhetorical, of course].
Smoke 'em if you got 'em!
I blow smoke in Bloomberg's general direction.
I don't see what's so wrong with banning smoking in public places. We ban public drunkenness, don't we? Anyway, cigarettes are a gateway drug that lead to marijuana abuse and eventually to consumption and sale to children of kilos of freebase crack cocaine.
Stop, yer crackin' me up!
Get thee hence! Wash off that cologne!
Belated HB, R! I got downed by the flu and missed it!
Thanks! It was great. First BD I enjoyed in a while :-)
I'm so pleased! I'm still on the hunt for a mate for you. Sorry about being 0 for 3 so far. My Yenta skills need to be tweaked!
I do not, never have, and never will promote smoking cigarettes by anyone.......however this crapola is totally getting out of hand.
The yenta-in-chief (my mom) thanks you for your valiant effors hehe!
Now THAT scares the hell out of me.
LOL. Light em up!
**belated**
That's funny, isn't it?
"Hand over your cigarettes!"
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