Teachers and doctors seek help in fighting smoking, drug and alcohol abuse among children and teenagers. These problems were tackled on Friday, April 11, at a roundtable organized by the municipal Department for Education, Youth and Sports (DGETS) and brining together specialists in the field, Info-Prim Neo reports. DGETS head Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb has said that while the department spares no effort to fight such vices in schoolchildren and students, nothing can be done unless the family and the society contribute. Among the department’s most common activities aimed to promote a healthy way of life among students are discussions, debates, roundtables, drawing and essay contests on the irreparable damage that smoking, alcohol and drug abuse can do to young bodies. Such activities engage adolescents in a bid to prove that life can be beautiful and eventful without being looked at trough smoke rings, or the mist of drugs or liquor. The municipal official has noted, however, that all these efforts are futile as long as the youngsters keep seeing their parents and teachers smoking and as long as buying cigarettes from kiosks located near schools is as easy as pie. Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb also remarked the limited access to information on ways of living a healthy life, the scarce knowledge of parents about a healthy lifestyle, the negative impact of media that promotes violence and aggression, and other. Taisia Anichiev, the principal of the Chisinau-based Nikolai Gogol Lyceum, believes that the legislation should make parents accountable and punishable for their children smoking or indulging in abusive behaviors. Furthermore, all the retail tobacco outlets should open not earlier than at 5-6 p.m., when adults finish their work and have their children again in their eyesight, Taisia Anichiev considers. Chisinau councilor Loreta Handrabura considers all pre-higher educational institutions must issue regulations to ban smoking in school restrooms and schoolyards. She also believes the vendors who sell cigarettes to minors must be held criminally accountable. Dr. Mihai Oprea, the director of the Drug Dispensary, says that one-third of the drug abusers registered in Moldova are in the age group 15-18. However, the real number of adolescents with drug abuse problems could be ten times higher that what the official statistics show. It has been established that 27 percent of the boys and 7 percent of the girls aged 16-18 are smokers. Some 10 percent of the total child smokers are under 10 years of age. Approximately 150 children with drug problems are currently under supervision, while 350 teenagers are given compulsory psychological assistance. As WHO estimates, 70 percent of premature death cases in adults are the result of their hazardous behaviors in adolescence.