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Quit Squad is working in partnership with Lancashire Football Association to encourage players, their families, friends, coaches, teams, clubs, and leagues promise to keep their homes, cars, sidelines and spaces SmokeFree.
Lancashire FA is asking clubs to adopt a SmokeFree sidelines policy to create a healthy, family friendly environment. SmokeFree sidelines is not about targeting smokers unfairly, but asking current smokers to understand their responsibility as a role model and be aware that children may see them smoking. The idea is to encourage smokers to either refrain from smoking during the match or move away from the sidelines and smoke where children and young adults are not present. If a smoker decides they want to quit smoking, support is available from Quit Squad.
At Longridge Town Juniors, we appreciate the health benefits that non smoking has on our children and promote the Quit Squads campaign. All our grounds and training facilities are smoke free grounds and we ask that members and visitors refrain from smoking or vaping on the sidelines and in sight of children at fixtures and during training.
Vaping is included in the Smokefree Sidelines initiative to help guard against youth uptake of vaping.
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Over 134,000 adults across Lancashire smoke. Quit Squad support Lancashire County Council's ambition of a smokefree generation by 2025.
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We can do this by:
Encouraging and supporting smokers to make a positive change and stop smoking
Children who live in the home of smoker are more likely to smoke themselves as an adult.
Reducing the number of adults, children and babies exposed to secondhand smoke
Secondhand smoke is the smoke blown out by a smoker, plus the smoke that comes out of the lit end of a cigarette. More than 80% of secondhand smoke is invisible and odourless. So no matter how careful you think you are being, your family, friends and pets still breathe in harmful poisons, leading to poorer health.
Making smoking the exception and not the norm
The less children are exposed to smoking, the more they will not see smoking as normal behaviour. Quit Squad are helping make Lancashire SmokeFree by encouraging residents to make their homes, cars, sports, schools, workplaces, events and spaces SmokeFree.
Lancashire Smokefree sidelines, is a collaboration between Lancashire FA and Stop Smoking Service, Quit Squad.
As an affiliated club to Lancashire FA we aim to introduce a culture of SmokeFree sidelines at our club to encourage harm reduction to those exposed to smoking. Children and young people are at risk the more they are exposed to smoke and the acceptance of smoking in our society. Furthermore, young people are most at risk of becoming smokers themselves if they grow up in communities where smoking is the norm. The aim of Tobacco Control is to change social norms and work to prevent the uptake of smoking. One approach to address this is to promote outside spaces used by children and young people as voluntary SmokeFree areas.
Smoking remains the biggest cause of preventable deaths in Lancashire and is known to increase health inequalities within our local society. Smoking often starts as a childhood addiction and evidence has shown that most adult smokers started smoking at a young age.