BURRILLVILLE – This week’s Sunday feature is an anti-smoking coloring cartoon and feature article. It is intended to reach out to children about the hazards and unhealthy results caused by smoking cigarettes, but can also reach teens and adults at the same time.
Everyone in my family smoked cigarettes. I never did smoke. Unfortunately, smoking had a negative impact on their lives as they grew older. It’s a bad habit, and if you do smoke cigarettes please do not smoke them around children.
Kids are also influenced by what they see and hear as they are growing up, and not smoking cigarettes can help keep them away from cigarettes altogether. Some of the direct issues related to smoking, other than the obvious health issues smokers face over time, can adversely impact kids lives. Cigarette smoking can cause stinky hair, wrinkled skin, stained teeth, bad breath, smelly clothes, bad lungs and poor health conditions. The earlier smoking cigarettes begins in life the sooner the poor health conditions can occur. Kids should not be exposed to cigarettes and definitely should not be smoking at all.
Please talk to your children about smoking, even if you do not smoke yourself. Kids can be influenced by their friends and others outside of your immediate family to smoke cigarettes even if you do not smoke. A great slogan for anti-smoking is; “Life Shouldn’t Be a Drag!”
Stay healthy and do not smoke cigarettes. Over the coming weeks, we will be featuring more anti-smoking coloring cartoons for kids and families along with reminder articles for teens and adults. Educational and awareness content related to health and safety must remain consistent in order to truly have a positive impact on lives. So please, don’t smoke!
Jim Weicherding is a Burrillville resident, and the founder and creator of an award-winning traffic safety effort Seasons of Safety. Weicherding contributes kids’ coloring cartoons, which can be printed and used to help parents discuss safety issues with their children. He has a long list of police officers and firefighters in his family and has worked with law enforcement and firefighters in a creative public safety capacity for more than two decades.
