Student Tobacco Prevention Program May Restart

SEBRING - About 400 middle and high school students met regularly to plan activities on spreading the word about the dangers of tobacco and smoking.

That was five years ago before a funding cut in 2003 severely curtailed, or at some schools ended the Students Working Against Tobacco (S.W.A.T.) program.

With a federal grant to fund it, the Highlands County Health Department proposes to reinstitute the program in the county's high schools.

Active S.W.A.T. membership in the county has dropped 70.8 percent since the year 2000, according Donna Noel Stayton, Health Department tobacco prevention specialist.

About 28.1 percent of the high school students in Highlands County reported using tobacco within the last 30 days of taking the 2006 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey .

"A program of this nature would provide students with the ability to influence their peers, advocate for social changes and improve their chances of not using tobacco products," she stated in a letter to the school district.

The Florida Department of Health cites cigarette smoking as the leading preventable cause of death, Stayton said. Each year, 29,000 Floridians die from smoking-related causes, and every day about 6,000 youths try their first cigarette.

Stayton is scheduled to address the school board today about restarting the tobacco prevention program.

A regular meeting of the School Board of Highlands County will be held today starting at 5:30 p.m. in the Garland Boggus Board Room at 426 School St., Sebring.

The State of Florida sued the tobacco industry in 1997 due to increasing Medicaid expenses caused by tobacco-related diseases among Floridians.

Money from the settlement funded the tobacco prevention programs in each of the state's 67 counties until 2003 when the Legislature cut the S.W.A.T. budget entirely. Some schools and counties continued their S.W.A.T. programs with other funding sources.