News and Events
DeSoto County TFP Members & SWAT Youth Conduct a Tobacco Litter Clean Up at McSwain Park in Honor of Kick Butts Day
March 20, 2019
In June of 2016, after a lot of hard work and negotiating, our City Council decided to implement a tobacco free zones policy at our parks and recreational facilities. The policy declared all areas that were directly intended for children/youth to be tobacco free, including smokeless tobacco and Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems.
After implementation, and to help make visitors aware of the policy, The Tobacco Free Partnership of DeSoto County purchased signs free of cost to the City of Arcadia which are in now place at all of the Tobacco Free Zones.
| On March 13th, in honor of Kick Butts Day and to show our appreciation to the City of Arcadia for adopting this policy, members of our TFP and SWAT spent their spring break conducting a tobacco litter clean up. Members first started by picking up tobacco related litter inside the playground and splash pad area (which is considered a tobacco free zone). There were only 3 cigarette butts total found inside this area, however, a decent amount of tobacco litter was pick up in the reminder of the park, which is outside of the tobacco free zone, where signage is not in place. |  |
SWAT Youth and Tobacco Free Partnership Member, Asya Shine do their part to keep our park and splash pad free of tobacco litter. |
SWAT youth proudly display the drastic decrease in tobacco litter since the last park clean up. (Pictured left to right: Jayden Brown, Cherry Nicklow, Jo Duke (holding the large amount of tobacco littler collected before there was a policy in place), Eva Bishop (displaying the small bag of litter from this years clean up), Genesis Clifton, and Savannah Tuttle)
While there was still a decent amount of littler collected outside the tobacco free zones, it was drastically less than what was collected at the last tobacco clean up when there was no policy in place. As one can easily see, adopting a tobacco policy and getting signage in place makes a huge difference! Policy + signage = healthier lungs for our children and youth, and much less tobacco litter.
If you are interested in implementing a tobacco policy of any sort, or want more information on becoming involved in local initiatives to reduce tobacco use in our community, please contact Jodie DeLoach, Tobacco Prevention Specialist at jdeloach@quitdoc.com
