Whistle blower to speak about deceptive practices of big tobacco companies

Tobacco whistle blower Dr. Victor DeNoble will be at Milton High School on Thursday, October 1 to present his program “Inside the Dark Side: The Science Behind Tobacco, The Truth Behind the Lies”. The event will be held at the Milton High School Auditorium at 6:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public. An engaging and dynamic speaker, Dr. DeNoble was the first person to reveal the deceptive practices of the tobacco industry. "It's a cover-up that is unbelievable,” he said, “it's unfathomable what has been held back from the American public."

Statistics from the 2008 Youth Tobacco Survey show that 10.3% of Santa Rosa middle school students and 31% of high school students used some form of tobacco; smokeless, cigarettes or cigars. This was higher than the state average of 9% for middle school students and 22.4% of high school students. “The survey for 2009 doesn’t list figures for the individual counties, so we won’t know until we receive the results of the 2010 survey how much tobacco use in our schools has decreased,” said Robbie Leggett, SWAT Coordinator for Santa Rosa County, “but, through the efforts of our youth participating in SWAT, we would definitely expect to see a decrease in usage in those groups.”

Dr. DeNoble is also scheduled to speak at other Santa Rosa County Schools:

�—� Jay High - September 30 at 1:00 p.m.

�—� Central High - October 1 at 1:00 p.m.

�—� Holley-Navarre Middle - October 2 at 2:10 p.m.

Arrangements for presentations at additional schools are still pending.

DeNoble was first recruited by Philip Morris Tobacco Company in the 1980’s to develop a safer cigarette. He studied the effects of nicotine and succeeded in developing a nicotine substitute that did not have the negative effects of the drug and was fired as a result. Dr. DeNoble received his Doctorate degree in the field of Experimental Psychology and has postdoctoral fellowships from both the National Institute of Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York and the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the University of Minnesota. He is currently the Vice President of Hissho, Inc., a scientific and medical communications company.

For more information on dates, times and locations, contact Robbie Leggett, Tobacco Prevention Specialist with the Santa Rosa County Health Department, at 983-5200, ext. 147.