Young Smokers in Europe

In my group we talked about 15 year-olds in Europe who smoke every day. We found out that Bulgaria has more than 25% of teenagers who smoke every day. So we asked ourselves why are so much teenagers smoking and where do they get their cigarettes? 

We think that the laws aren’t strict enough or rather not in all countries in Europe. For example in Bulgaria you don’t need an ID, so everyone can buy a cigarette. That isn’t good because cigarettes aren’t healthy for teenagers and adults either. I’ve taken some notes how we can reduce the number of smokers; my first idea was to demand the identity card from everyone. This way the teens can’t get cigarettes anymore. 

The second idea was to sell the cigarettes at a higher price. This way some teenagers can’t buy them anymore because they haven’t enough money to get them every day and perhaps the adults won’t buy them as often as they have done before. 

And my third and last idea was to sell the cigarettes not at every petrol station and not in all discounters or supermarkets. For example; if every city got only 1 or 2 shops which sells cigarettes maybe the people think that it isn’t worth the trouble to drive so far.

I think if every country (no matter where) would introduced some of these ideas the number of smoking teenagers and smoking adults would decrease.

D. S. 9F2

Lösungsvorschläge gegen die Trennung von Eltern

In den vergangenen Jahren steigt die Zahl der getrennten Ehepaare in Deutschland immer weiter an. Dies ist besonders für die Kinder eine Belastung und eine unschöne Erfahrung. Doch was kann man dagegen tun?

 In Italien zum Beispiel ist die Zahl der Kinder die mit beiden Elternteilen zusammen leben noch viel höher als hierzulande, denn nur wenige Paare lassen sich dort scheiden. Also, wie könnte man den Leuten hier in Deutschland oder auch in anderen Länderen helfen? 

Eine Möglichkeit wäre zum Beispiel die Eheberatung. Der Staat könnte mehr Einrichtungen für Partner oder Familien errichten lassen, um so die angespannten Situationen zu klären. So würden sich die Eltern weniger streiten und in den Sitzungen mit Therapeuten oder ähnlichen Leuten offen über ihre Probleme reden. Sie hätten nicht mehr so viele Komplikationen im Alltag und in der Beziehung und hätten so keinen bzw. weniger Gründe sich zu trennen. 

Eine zweite Möglichkeit wäre die Verkürzung der Arbeitszeiten oder die Änderung der Arbeitsplätze, denn viele Beziehungen scheitern an der Fernbeziehung. Zum Beispiel wenn der Partner in einer anderen Stadt arbeitet und so nur am Wochenende daheim sein kann. Würde man dies ändern, sodass die Arbeitgeber dafür sorgen, dass man nur in der eigenen Stadt einen Arbeitsplatz bekommt, so hätten die Paare mehr Zeit für einander und würden sich so nicht auseinanderleben. 

Würde man das alles ändern würde die Zahl der getrennten Paare vielleicht nicht mehr so stark weiter wachsen und es hätten nicht mehr so viele Kinder darunter zu leiden.

A-L. M. 9F2

Verbesserung der Sportlichkeit von Jugendlichen

Ich werde mich heute mit Sportaktivitäten von Jugendlichen befassen. Zur heutigen Zeit machen nur noch sehr wenige jugendliche Sport, mal abgesehen vom Schulsport. Mit meinen 3 folgenden Argumenten möchte ich Jugendliche dazu ermutigen mehr Sport in ihrer Freizeit zu leisten.

Beispielsweise Teamsport fördert das Zusammenarbeiten in der Schule in einzelnen Freundschaftsgruppen aber auch während der späteren Arbeitszeit. Außerdem schadet es nichts sich „fit“ zu halten.

Es ist auch gesund bzw. gut für den Körper viel Gemüse, Obst oder andere nährstoffreiche Produkte zu essen. Deswegen fände ich es auch gut, wenn man in Supermärkten viel mehr Bioprodukte verkauft werden würden und außerdem die Preise der Bioprodukte geringer werden. Dies hilft nämlich auch sehr zur Steigerung der Gesundheit.

Mein letztes Argument für eine gute Gesundheit wäre ein ausgewogener, regelmäßiger Schlaf. Durch einen guten Schlaf kann man ich deutlich gesunder fühlen, als wenn man jeden Tag nur 1-3 Stunden schläft. Deswegen finde ich es schlecht, wenn Menschen über die Nacht arbeiten müssen. Da es sehr schwer ist tagsüber zu schlafen und man seinen kompletten Schlafrhythmus verstellen muss. Wenn man dann beispielsweise mit 65 Jahren in Rente geht kann man, mindestens 3-4 Wochen, nachts nicht gut schlafen.

L.S. 9F2

Binge drinking teenagers

Today I will present you my suggestions about under-age drinking of alcohol.

If there are teenagers in a country who drink alcohol I would demand very hard laws. A good example for this is the USA. There you must be 21 years old to drink and buy alcohol. In Germany, however, you can be 16 and you go in a store and you are allowed to buy beer.

A thing which is also very important is that the seller has always to check the identification of the person who buys alcohol.

In our statistics you could see that the teenagers in Germany drink a lot more alcohol than the teenagers in the USA. Then they ought to clarify the things that can happen if you are intoxicated. For example they could once a week watch a video in the school where teenagers can see the consequences of drinking alcohol, e.g. they see how they are in this moment.

If you are a teenager you should have a mentor with whom you can anonymously speak about your problems. Then you don’t have to talk about those problems with your family. To talk about those with an external person is much easier than to talk with your father or your mother. This mentor should also be younger because if the teenager talks with the mentor, the teenager would then feel better because it is not like if they talked about alcohol with a person who is 20 years older than them.

Another suggestion is that the family knows what their child does. I don’t think they must control him or her but they must know who his friends are and so on. And they must love their child because the child needs this.

Those are my suggestions about teenagers that drink alcohol.

I hope I could help you with this.

N. M. 9F2

How can we stop the young peoples’ smoking problem in Europe?

First of all we have the question: Why do so many young people smoke?

The main problem exists in the social environment of young people. There’re too many adults who support them in getting cigarettes and other drugs. Very often young people have problems because of the peer pressure so the youth needs more security in their personal environment especially in their families. If parents told them more about bad effects smoking has and if they had more understanding for their children´s situation, there would be more trust between children and parents.

As we can see, it’s very important for adults to get more information about the smoking problems.  With this information, it´s easier for parents to teach their children about the danger of smoking. Very often adults simply ignore this problem, that’s one of the biggest mistake they can do.

Parents’ help, understanding and trust are the best way to protect young people from peer pressure!

Another big problem is that many young people don´t take the consequences of smoking seriously. It seems to be unreal and not authentic. It seems that they can´t imagine or just ignore the possibility of getting cancer. So we have to make them aware of the consequences and that they are realistic. in In most of the European countries there´re projects but they´re not really popular. Some cancer organizations offer young people to talk with victims of cancer especially lung cancer patients.  A governments’ research shows that the majority of students at schools who take part in those projects don’t smoke.  So it´s important to talk about the effects of smoking!

In poor countries like Bulgaria we can find the largest number of young smokers. Very often dealing with cigarettes and drugs is the main income in poor countries. The low number of jobs and education (schools, universities) are two of the reasons for this problematic fact. So first of all these countries need more education for example in schools. There´re already some voluntary projects from teachers, people working health centres and a lot of others. They go to these countries to teach and tell young people about smoking and its negative effects.

Sadly there´re lots of countries where smoking is an old tradition.  Here the most adults are smokers so they´re bad examples for children. If children see that everybody smokes, it´s not easy for them to see the danger of smoking. They take adults (especially their parents) as role models so if they smoke, they’ll also smoke.

If there were less adult smokers, there would also be less young smokers!

 L.B. 9F2