News and Events

Dixie County High School Students Working Against Tobacco Share Information on Flavored Tobacco in Horseshoe Beach
September 14, 2013

On Saturday, September 14, 2013, the Dixie County High School Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT) Club presented the to residents and visitors of Horseshoe Beach, Florida about Flavored Tobacco

The SWAT youth shared how the tobacco industry has used these products to target kids.  The students set up a display booth at the first annual Florida Cracker Seafood Festival with props and visuals designed to highlight the various techniques that big tobacco uses to grab kids attention. The display included information on tobacco products such as Snus, flavored spit tobacco, and cigarillos and other small cigars. The SWAT students also handed out Strange Candy pamphlets to the many people that passed by the booth during the event.

Horseshoe Beach 

Students, parents and grandparents that stopped to learn more at the SWAT booth were surprised at the many fruit and candy flavors such as Blue Berry Blast, Cotton Candy, Orange, Peach and Grape available in kid-friendly packaging that big tobacco uses to attract kids.

During the event, a few fisherman discussed how they use bright color lures to attract the fish when fishing and they noticed how the tobacco companies also uses similar bright colors on the tobacco packages to lure kids to their products.  The SWAT students even compared the flavored tobacco to "chum", garbage meat that is thrown into the Gulf to attract the fish to the boat. 

The tobacco industry has been pushing the many forms of flavored tobacco in retail outlets such as local convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, and pharmacies in order to "chum up" kids to try tobacco for the first time. SWAT students that have been studying the issue have discovered that every tobacco retailer in Dixie County sells flavored tobacco.

State Representative Keith Perry stopped by the Dixie County High School SWAT booth to visit with the students. Representative Perry remembered the students from a presentation conducted by the SWAT club last year after Dixie County Commissioners adopted a Candy Flavored Tobacco Resolution.  Representative Perry has been vocally supportive of the work that has been done by the Dixie County SWAT and has spoke out against candy flavored tobacco in many venues. 

The DCHS SWAT hopes that the Horseshoe Beach Town Council will also adopt their own resolution on Flavored Tobacco this year, joining the Cross City and Dixie County in their support of restricting the availabiliy of these products.

For more information, contact the Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County at info@tfp-dixie.org.