BABY SMOKERS.

Shannon News, 11 July 1924, Page 2

BABY SMOKERS.

SCHOOL TEACHERS ALARMED. "SOAKED IN TOBACCO." SYJJNEY, July 7. Smoking among Sydney schoolchildren, according to. their teachers, is becoming serious. Even youngsters of 9 and 10 in .the infants' classes are beginning to smoke. Alarmed at this tendency, the monthly meeting of the Teachers' Federation, at the Education Department, to-day protested bitterly against cigarette slot machines being installed around the city, and decided to urge the Government to enforce rigidly the law barring children under 16 from buying cigarettes in the shops. The president of the Federation, Mr Dash, brought the question up in his report, declaring that the chief secretary should take some action. A delegate: There's as much danger in the shops as in the slot machines.

Mr Alanson said that he couldn't understand ihow the slot machines could be legal, when the law prohibited the sale of cigarettes or tobacco to children under 16. "I have seen boys of 14 and 15 so soaked in tobacco that they've been unable to study," he declared.

A woman teacher told the meeting that she had seen small boyis with cigarettes and tobacco in the infants' school. "And they look it, too," she added. "They haven't got a fait of energy, and they're ready to fall off their seats at a moment's notice."

, She thought tobacconists should be prevented from supplying cigarettes to anyone not fully grown up. "And I don't consider you're properly grown up at 21," she declared. The meeting was inlanimous in supporting the president's protest, and urging the Government to act.

The Chinese residents of the Manawatu nave decided to present two cups to mark the occasion of the visH of the Chinese University students* Soccer team to Palmerston North. One is to be handed over to the team for competition in China and the other to the Manawatu Football Association for a club competition.