Cancer Care Warning Kids About Smoking

[Timothy Gangwer]

By Angela Brown

Updated 8 hours ago

Central Plains Cancer Care Services is planning to go into the schools in the Portage la Prairie area to demonstrate to students the hazards of smoking.

Cancer Care has received some new software, known as Smoker Aging Simulation, that shows how skin can age as a result of smoking.

"Even if we can just go in at the noon-hour and have students come up to us ... to get them interested in that way," Central Plains Cancer Care resource co-ordinator Daisy Dowhy said. "We are going in there with the whole package of good information."

The new software was obtained by Cancer Care from a distributor in the U.S.

"I think it's going to be such a valuable tool with a very good message to take forth," Dowhy said. "It (shows) them how smoking affects them visually, as well as health- wise."

The aging-profile software will show students how smoking can make them look older, and actually accelerate the aging process.

"With this software, we can age a person's face as they watch," Dowhy said, adding those who see it will say: 'If I continue smoking, this is how I will look."

She hopes to target the high school students as well as those in Grades 7 and 8, to help provide information to the youth before they start the habit of smoking.

"It's an effective visual teaching-tool for tobacco-control programs," she said.

Dowhy hopes to start the program by going in the schools this April or May.

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