• 7/29/2007
  • Tallahassee, FL
  • staff
  • www.local10.com

Florida’s once-heralded youth anti-smoking program is coming back.

Lawmakers had gutted the program’s budget in recent years, but last year voters forced the program back into relevancy. Voters in November changed the constitution to require the Legislature to put 15 percent of the state’s tobacco settlement dollars into the program each year, just under $58 million in the current year.

“We have restored an effective youth tobacco prevention program, which includes a substantial appropriation for smoking cessation,” said Don Webster, CEO of the American Cancer Society’s Florida Division.

In the late 1990s Florida’s effort to convince kids that smoking wasn’t cool was widely praised, partly for its original TV ads that had lots of teens – and young adults – talking about them, and partly because it seemed to work.

The number of kids who said in surveys that they smoke dropped off fairly dramatically during the time the program was in full swing. Later, when the program was no longer being used, the decreases leveled off.

The program featured a teen-oriented ad campaign that didn’t bother with subtlety, squarely taking on the tobacco industry, and portraying industry officials as outright killers. One ad compared tobacco company executives to Hitler, Stalin and the Ku Klux Klan. Another featured a boy getting his tongue bitten off by a dog he was taunting. The ad, which targeted smokeless tobacco, asked “how attached are you to your tongue?”

The pinstripe suit-crowd wasn’t amused, and many lawmakers also didn’t particularly like the in-your-face ads, which were designed at least in part by teenagers themselves.

After putting $70 million into the campaign from the state’s settlement of a lawsuit with cigarette makers in 1998, spending dropped off steeply until lawmakers were putting a token $1 million a year into it, rendering it essentially dormant.

Voters stepped in last year, doing what lawmakers wouldn’t and forcing the state to restore money for the effort.

He didn’t have much of a choice on spending the money because of the constitutional mandate, but Gov. Charlie Crist has said he supports the boost in spending. In May he signed legislation spelling out the details of how the new program will be administered. On Wednesday, he re-enacted that bill signing in a ceremony to draw attention to the return of the program.

“By teaching our children about these risks early on, we are taking steps necessary to protect the health of future generations of our fellow Floridians,” Crist said.

While the program itself will return, it’s not clear yet exactly what it will do to try to fight teen smoking. It will include an advertising component, but the details of what that campaign will look like are yet to emerge.

The legislation created a 23-member advisory council to oversee the program, four of whom are appointed by the governor. Crist announced his choices Wednesday. They are: Steven Hougland, director of the state’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco; Robin Peters, prevention director in the state’s Office of Drug Control; Erin Sylvester, of Panama City, a Florida State University student; and Mae Waters of Tallahassee, a researcher at Florida State.

It likely will be at least early next year before most Floridians come into contact with the anti-smoking campaign, at least in the form of new ads, said Paul Hull, vice president of the American Cancer Society, which pushed hard for the constitutional amendment.

While they were mostly on the same page Wednesday as Crist touted the return of the anti-tobacco program, the governor and anti-smoking activists don’t quite see eye to eye on another issue.

The American Cancer Society and other groups have pushed for several years for Florida to increase its cigarette tax rate, which is one of the lowest in the nation and has been the same for almost 20 years. Florida’s 33 cent tax is well below the national average of over $1.

Crist demurred, saying he isn’t a fan of raising any taxes.