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You’re
a winner if you take a stand against smoking!
Sixteen lucky teenagers from all over Northern Ireland have
won a number of prizes from the Health Promotion Agency (HPA)
by entering the www.up-2-you.net website competition against
smoking.
The winners
who attended an awards ceremony at the HPA were selected
from over 1,300 entries for a competition which
encouraged young people to navigate their way around the
site to find the answers to questions about how smoking
can damage
your health.
The website
forms one element of the HPA’s
anti-smoking public information campaign which primarily
focuses on smoking. This website
has recently been updated to include information on alcohol
and drugs and is targeted towards pupils in years 8, 9 and
10 as a health information toolkit.
Research
from the HPA shows that one in three Year 12 girls in Northern
Ireland are smoking every
day which is
double the number for boys of the same age.
Speaking
during the presentations, Alice Quinn, Chair of the HPA,
said: “Smoking
is one of the most challenging issues for public health
today. We know from research that the majority of young
people become
involved with cigarettes in the first few years of secondary
school. This is why the up-2-you campaign focuses on this
age group. The young people who have won these prizes today
know that smoking kills and they are the winners if they
have take a stand not to smoke.”
BBC Sports presenter, Jerome Quinn, also attended the awards
event by distributing prizes to the young people.
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