News and Events

The Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County Begins to Address Local Point of Sale Tobacco Advertising
August 31, 2016

Dixie County Tobacco Free Partnership Members and Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT) Youth have created a Point of Sale (POS) Subcommittee to review the assessment of local tobacco marketing practices at the retail level! 

Tobacco companies spend $10-$13 billion dollars a year to market their products. These companies spend close to $1 billion dollars in Florida alone. This represents $7,700-$10,000 dollars spent to recruit each of the 1.3 million new teenage smokers who pick up their first cigarette every year.

Eighty-five percent of that total is spent on point-of-sale marketing. This type of marketing includes contracts, product placement, sign placement, and price breaks. This aggressive marketing floods our stores with images and objects that promote smoking. Exterior ads are used to expose the entire community to tobacco messages. Children are 3 times more sensitive than adults to current tobacco advertising and marketing.

Tobacco Free Partnership members and SWAT youth have assessed 30 stores in Dixie County to gain more information and data on the marketing of these products. The stores are being assessed with a store mapper tool provided by countertools.org.

The Store Mapper is an interactive mapping website that allows advocates to find and display local tobacco retailer data. The Mapper also analyzes and displays relationships between tobacco retail and other important locations such as youth venues (schools and parks), and between neighborhood variables such as tobacco retailer density and level of household poverty.

The policy section of the Store Mapper allows you to evaluate the impact of potential point of sale policies. Reports and maps that show the locations affected by proposed policies reducing the number and density of retail outlets, such as: pharmacy bans, stores-near-schools-or parks bans, or retailer proximity restrictions.

This is an initial stage to build an alertness of the issues regarding point of sale marketing, and will provide education for change. This data will also aid to evaluate policy implementation and compliance.  A Point of Sale Training has been scheduled for October 27, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. at the Dixie County Library, 16328 US-19, Cross City, FL.  If you would like more information about this project or if you would like to join the POS Sub Committee contact MAnderson@QuitDoc.com