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HERALD Community Wednesday January 1 Numbers To Nqte EMERGENCY Police Fire or Ambulance Dial 911 Fire Information 1 33 Police NonEmergency 8785511 Hospital Distress Centre 8771211 Slippery roads Regional Police report a Mississauga man severely damaged his 1989 Ford sedan after he collided with a 1976 Jeep on 9th Line and 25 Side road Sunday Police say due to slippery road con ditions neither the driver of the Ford or the Jeep could stop and they collided after the Jeep driver an Erin man lost control of his vehicle after striking a snow drift The Jeep was moderately damaged There were no injuries and police laid no charges Tavern breakin A Georgetown tavern was broken into Friday night and unknown thieves stole thousands of dollars worth of televisions liquor and games Police report unknown suspects first tried to pry pen the front door of the establishment and when that failed removed a win dow pane to gain entrance Once in side they stole a 1200 Mitsubishi color TV a color TV worth of open liquor bot tles from the bar and a 75 dart board Police are continuing their investigation Domestic dispute A Georgetown man has been charged with assault by police after he was caught pinning down a screaming woman at his Georgetown apartment Friday Police were called to the scene and when they arrived the accused was on top of the screaming woman and holding her down When police ap proached he let her go and was placed in the cruiser The 26-year- old man will appear in Milton court Feb Wanted suspect Police are looking for a man who was seen stealing money from a womans purse in the Miracle Mart grocery store in Georgetown Fnday Police say the suspect was observed standing around shopping carts with purses in them A woman confronted the suspect who then fled but when another women checked her purse she discovered her eel skin wallet containing cash and all her credit cards and identification stolen The man has been described as a nonwhite ap proximately 2530 yearsold weighing kilograms and about 183 centimetres tall He has no facial hair and was dressed in a dark winter jacket brown checked dress slacks and black dress shoes If you have any information on the suspect call Detective Sergeant Michael at ext 2115 Robbie Bums month January jsftobert Burns month at The Arthritis Society From the first strains of Lang Syne the Burns song that tradi tionally ushers in the New Year through the festivities of Bums Night celebrated worldwide to commemorate the poets birth on January 25 The Arthritis Society honours Scotlands na tional bard During The Arthritis Societys Blitz to raise money for arthritis research patient care and public education Bobbie Burns is remembered as the poet whose genius was cut short at the age of by rheumatic heart disease a form of arthritis Today close to four million Canadians one in seven have some form of rheumatic disease and tens of thousands addi tional cases are diagnosed each month Rheumatic disease more commonly known as arthritis is a general term for acute and chronic conditions characterized by inflammation soreness and stiffness of muscles and pain in joints and associated structures Rheumatoid arthritis alone af fects as many as people and more than a million Cana dians have osteoarthritis serious to warrant the care of a physician As well thousands of children under the age of 16 have arthritis or an arthritis- related problem The costs of arthritis are enor mous and include far more than just hospital physicians visits and therapeutic services Current estimates put the costs of the various forms of arthritis to Canada at nearly billion an nually Impossible to assess are the social and emotional costs to people with arthritis and to their families Well aware that he had rheumatic disease Burns wrote in January of the year of his death I have late drunk deep of the cup of affliction the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever For the last three months I have been tortured with an ex cruciating rheumatism which has reduced me to nearly the last stage Pale emaciated so feeble as occasionally to need help from my chair my spirits fled I It was to be however 130 years after his death before the poets affliction was publicly recogniz ed Sir James of Dumfries Scotland where Burns died first suggested in 1926 that death was caused by the com plications of chronic rheumatic heart disease In the ensuing years various medical profes sionals have debated the posthumous diagnosis Doctors Buchanan and both in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton Ontario discuss the poets terminal illness and possible causes of death in a paper written by them in for the Scottish Medical Journal A careful review of Robert Burns terminal illness especial ly as documented in his cor respondence observe Buchanan and Kean supports the widely held contention that death may have been due to subacute bacterial endocarditis secondary to chronic rheumatic heart disease Today thanks to research rheumatic heart disease no longer poses the danger that it did to Burns However rheumatic diseases including rheumatoid arthritis osteoar thritis systemic lupus erythematosus and gout are common So too are juvenile ar thritis ankylosing spondylitis psoriatic and scleroderma The Arthritis Society is the only nonprofit organization in Canada devoted solely to funding and pro moting arthritis research care and education The Society was established in 1948 to search for what causes and what will cure arthritis Since then dependent almost exclusively on the public for the necessary funds we have channelled some million in donations toward finding the solutions Annually in Ontario The Ar thritis Society budgets just over two thirds pi our public funds to support research and manpower development Program develop ment education and information and fund raising consume 28 per cent of public funds and ad ministration accounts for five per cent tB Fun during the storm Cock of Terra Cotta took son Jeffrey 7 and Library for some reading time during last weeks daughter Jessica 10 to the Halton Hills Public storm Herald photo by Steven LeBlanc Kick the habit during national nonsmoking week By BARBARA Adapted from material developed by the New Brunswick Department of Health and Community Services National Nonsmoking Week is January 1992 so what better a time for us to reflect on our at titudes and knowledge abut tabacco usage and tobacco sales to minors We all know how hard it is to quit smoking That is why an im portant key to solving the smok ing problem is cutting it off at the beginning before young people start Virtually all smokers start smoking before the age of By the time young people get into their between and per cent of them are smoking A quarter of a century after health authorities officially proclaimed that smoking kills cigarettes are still popular among Canadas youth Why are health messages not getting through to some young people For one thing teenagers generally feel so healthy that il lness is far from their minds As well they can not look far enough ahead to think of being ill or dy ing in middle age This is not something that will happen to them Teenagers also want to fit in to be accepted some of them smoking makes them feel more like part of the group If their friends smoke they are more likely to smoke Many adolescents believe that most adults smoke and they want to be seen as cool more adult Tobacco advertising hits at this adolescent need Cigarette adver tisements which are still found in some stores make smoking look sexy glamorous and even healthy Another reason is addic tion Many young people start to smoke thinking that they will be able to quit when they get older In fact many become thoroughly hooked while teenagers then when they leave school and have more time on their hands when they can smoke find their cigarette consumption increasing rather than decreasing The ad diction grows Most smokers plan to quit but many never get around to it Because of a youthful mistake many smoke all their lives Their lives are often cut short by a heart attack cancer or other smoking related diseases Every year 35000 Canadians die prematurely because they smok ed And every year despite the best efforts of many people the cigarette clock starts ticking for thousands of young people So this is what we are up against we will call it the four Adolescence This is the stage when teens feel the need to take risks to rebel a bit a stage where they cannot see the conse quences Acceptance Adolescents seek acceptance and approval from their friends and they will do some strange things to get this including smoking Advertising Ads in stores and still some magazines tell kids that smoking is a cool thing to do Addiction Dependence on cigarettes can develop very quickly To the big four As we add a fifth- Availability over a cen tury cigarettes have been widely available Our casual way of sell ing tobacco began in the days when it was not known to be harmful Today despite a grow ing body of knowledge about smoking and illness society has not changed its way of treating tobacco products Cigarettes and tobacco products are sold in stores with wholesome products like milk and bread This makes it very difficult to think of tobac co as a drug product In addition tobacco products are prominent ly displayed and hard to escape Traditionally they are sold to children buying for adults and too often to young people buying for themselves No other dangerous addictive drug is treated in this casual manner Preventative in formation and programmes are not enough We need to change the environment we need more community involvement if our children are to grow up smoke free The challenge is to heighten the awareness in the community to the point where smoking is understood to be a dangerous drug addiction where smoking is seen to be something done by the minority of adults and where cigarettes are finally treated as a drug product In doing this we will create an atmosphere in which children are strongly sup ported ina nonsmoking decision Many parents feel somewhat powerless as their children become teenagers in affecting their decisions But parents do have influence Whether a smok ing or nonsmoking parent here are ideas on how to influence your children If you smoke adjust your smoking habits to help educate your children for instance by creating smokefree areas of your home Never send children to tfc store to buy cigarettes Support stores that do not sell tobacco products Parents need to be aware that the Federal Tobacco Restraint Act prohibits anyone under the age of sixteen from smoking or chewing tobacco on a street or in a public place or have in hisher possession whether for hisher use or not tobacco products Along with raising awareness among parents and creating port for curtailing sales to young people it is important to create an awareness among retailers about the Provincial Minors Pro tection Act and about the ad- dictiveness of tobacco