How Does Smoking Affect SIS?
By Sergio Calderon

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One Consequence of Smoking
In February, the whole MYP took a survey about smoking and its consequences, which 8th graders made to develop a non-smoking campaign for our school and community.  Although there were very positive answers, there were also a lot of surprises. Some of the surprising responses were that about eleven MYP students smoke:  three students smoke cigarettes, two smoke Shisha or Power Pipe, and about the six students smoke cigars, drugs, marihuana or others, which means over 20% of MYP students engage in some type of smoking. In this survey, not everything was negative, there was a great thing such as that less of 80% left of the MYP said that they don’t smoke or that they just don’t have anything to do with it.

Some positive responses were that about 28 MYP students answered that they do not smoke any cigarette per week, but the students left said that they smoke once or more in a week. Another positive fact is that from those 11 students that said that they do smoke, way more than the half answered that they really want to stop smoking, but they just don’t find the way out. There is not a lot of confidence in these answers because the students only got to choose the answers, and thus they couldn’t write their own thoughts for these questions.

There were also some questions in which students could type their thoughts or answers. For example, to the question “Why do you smoke?,” most people answered that they smoke only in parties when they are drinking something. Other people also answered that the reason why they smoke is because their friends or brothers smoke or they get pressure from the group to do it. The most important questions in the survey was, “What would help you or others stop smoking?”. Most people answered that Nicorette quitting-smoking products such as gum will help students to stop smoking, but also the non-smoking students answered that there should be more serious campaigns that show people affected by the consequences of smoking. They said that would help by getting people to convince themselves to stop smoking or to just don’t start.

However, these results let us see that there is a rather high percentage of people at SIS who smoke or are involved with smoking (people that have smoked once), and that we have to act against it by doing serious campaigns that would sincerely help people to stop smoking or to never start. Smoking is a very serious issue that affects us all, and for that, the 8th grade has been developing a non-smoking campaign that will be also promoted by going to the Zeil in Frankfurt and promote the message there so everyone in our community can take part in it.