March 5, 2003
SMS campaign against cannabis
The British Lung Foundation (BLF) is planning on sending 30,000 texts messages early March, to young adults to raise awareness that smoking cannabis can be harfmul to their health.
The SMS will read: «do u think cannabis is as bad 4 ur lungs as tobacco?» and the recipients will be asked to respond so that the BLF can evaluate how many people realise the dangers of smoking cannabis.
Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the BLF, expresses her fears in an interview with Health News : “We have heard of people as young as 30 waiting for lung transplants after heavy use of cannabis. My fear is we will have another generation of people with smoking-related lung disease, just as we had in the 1950s before the dangers of tobacco were widely known.”
In a similar spirit, in February 2002, a French government ministry, La Mission Interministérielle de lutte contre la drogue et la toxicomanie en France (Mildt), sent out 20'000 SMS, inviting young people to visit their website on drugs and alcool prevention.
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