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Last updated 1:02AM ET
February 16, 2012
WUSF 89.7 News
WUSF 89.7 News
Getting Smokified
(2009-11-20)
High School Student Victoria Kinney Gets Smokified
(WUSF) - A group of high school students crowd around the brightly-painted vehicle called the "Smokifier Van." It uses age-progression software to show young people how they would look 20 years down the road - if they smoked.

The Smokifier Van is paid for by the state's 1998 settlement with the big tobacco companies. The trust fund was continually raided by lawmakers looking for a way to ease the state's cash crunch. So in 2006, voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring the state to spend more than $50 million a year on anti-smoking messages.

The message has gotten through to USF's sprawling medical complex. Starting now, anyone wanting to light up will have to walk a couple of hundred yards to other parts of the Tampa campus.
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