More than 400,000 people in the United States will die this year from a tobacco-related disease. For Kick Butts Day this year, SWAT students from Avon Park and Sebring high schools are taking a stand to stop youth from getting hooked on deadly tobacco products. ...more

March 23, 2009

It wasn't just a New Year's resolution. Dave Melden seriously wanted to quit smoking. ...more

January 1, 2009

About 22 miles of a proposed natural gas pipeline expansion could someday stretch through Pasco County. ...more

June 11, 2008

DADE CITY -- County commissioners are continuing to research hiring only nonsmokers in the future and considering a program to help current workers kick the tobacco habit. ...more

June 10, 2008

A health department representative is slated to discuss smoking-cessation programs for Pasco employees at a county commission meeting today. ...more

June 10, 2008

Contrary to a much–publicized announcement last May, Hollywood's rating system fails to warn parents that most movies feature smoking. Young audiences around the world are still being bombarded with billions of tobacco impressions every time an actor lights up or a tobacco brand is shown. This isn't a matter of personal taste or censorship. It's a major public health challenge. The tobacco industry rakes in $4 billion in lifetime sales through Hollywood movies that recruit kids to smoke every year. ...more

February 18, 2008

SEBRING — To kick butts, Tobacco Prevention Specialist Donna Noel Stayton thought about donning a cigarette costume to hand out fliers about the dangers of smoking. "Don't be a butt," Stayton said Monday at the Highlands County Health Department. People will say "oh no, here comes the lady with her cigarette costume." After working as a county health educator, Stayton assumed her new title Jan. 25 and specific mission, to combat smoking, after the county received a $388,000 grant for tobacco prevention. "We are so excited about this opportunity," she said. ...more

February 12, 2008

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 . ...more

January 22, 2008

After 56 years, Dave Melden was ready to quit smoking. He had tried before, and once went an entire year without a drag, but he always returned to the habit he picked up as a 13-year-old farm boy in Bay City, Mich. ...more

January 7, 2008

SEBRING — Random drug testing started this year in the county's middle schools with only one student testing positive during the first semester. A reported 260 students were tested at the School Board of Highlands County's four middle schools with negative results (no drugs in their system) for 259 students and one student testing positive. "So that's pretty good," said Student Services Coordinator Patty Jackson. The students who are tested are picked randomly just as in the high school. Drug testing started at the high school level near the beginning of the 2006-07 school year with school officials confident that it would give students a reason to say "no" when offered drugs. At the high school level thus far this school year, of the 124 students who were tested, two had "positive" results indicating ...more

December 28, 2007