Getting Smokified

High School Student Victoria Kinney Gets Smokified

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 campus.