Parents and teachers of Ecole Mother Teresa Catholic School and Ecole Fox Run School attended an information session on “Vaping and Cannabis with Youth” on Jan. 23 in the Fine Arts Room.
Gail Foreman a tobacco reduction specialist with Alberta Health Services was invited by the teachers to give the presentation after requests from parents.
The session ran for an hour and a half and covered vaping and cannabis use.
“I hope they learned that there are resources available and I hope they learned about the potential health concerns and the actual health concerns, those were my biggest priorities, and just to raise their general level of knowledge and awareness,” said Foreman in an interview, adding parents should understand the issues and have conversations with their kids.
“I think the misconceptions [about vaping and cannabis] aren’t as important as where the sources of information [come from],” explained Foreman, adding people get most of their information from where it is most readily available, which is on the Internet.
Foreman said the Internet is not always the most reliable source of information, but Alberta Health Services feels it is important for health promotion to make the facts, which are based on scientific evidence, available.
“Dr. David Hammond out of the University of Waterloo in Ontario has done some recent research that says that sadly levels of vaping and smoking has risen over the last several months and it is a disturbing trend that is played out, I guess, in experience at the local level here in Central Zone,” Foreman said, adding there is a lot of interest among professionals and parents to learn more about vaping.
Information on cannabis can be found on the Drug Safe website.
For those looking for more information on vaping they can visit the AlbertaQuits website.
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