Do graphic anti-smoking ads make smokers want to quit?

New York City (and/or the state) is running a series of extremely graphic anti-smoking ads, featuring what looks like actual surgery on the jugular of a supposed smoker to remove plaque buildup caused by smoking. It is hard to imagine how they accomplished the shots of a surgeon, talking to the camera as he lifts the rubbery jugular with a surgical tool as he talks about it, and then removes the yellow plaque with tweezers to show viewers at home. Some of the shots are of the face of the smoker allegedly being operated on.

I remember being shown utterly revolting anti-drug films in high school that accomplished nothing more than make some of the more sensitive in our class faint. Did they scare anyone away from using heroin? Anyone who would have been inclined to use it in the first place, I mean? I doubt it. And I doubt these graphic commercials do anything but nauseate anyone not fast enough with the remote.

But what do I know? I quit because it was too expensive and my wife and daughter wanted me to.

How about you?

I've known several people who stopped smoking after seeing what smoker's lung looks like.

:hi:

A smoker will only quit when he/she really wants to.

The article continues at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6967160.stm

Those are lungs, friend. The lungs of the smoker are on the right. :hi:

Delicious!


;-)

Back in 1991 I was involved in leasing cigarette machines etc. One of the companies with whom I dealt was selling the cigarettes which were call DEATH.
All of their packets and marketing material had graphic pictures and warnings like " These will definately kill you"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(cigarette)

edit- the above link edits itself . After death you add underscore (cigarette)

You know, the original owners of both the healthy dead lung and the darkened ugly dead lung.

I don't smoke, but when I've seen those pictures, I wondered what killed the guy with the better lung.

The one I saw showed a picture with quotes of a "healthy" 45 year old lung and a smoke ridden 45 year old lung. They clearly meant to show that the non-smoker was better off.

My takeaway was that both 45 year olds were dead anyway.

Nicotine is an addiction. Studies have shown that nicotine has a physiological hold on the brain similar to cocaine. Nicotine addiction is very difficult to break. The obvious first course solution to nicotine addiction is to prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.

If that is all that graphic pictures accomplish, then well done.

But these sorts of ads have been running for years and years and years, and people still take up the habit. I did, despite knowing what smoker's lung looks like, knowing it causes cancer, etc., etc., etc. I did because it was a pleasure to smoke.

I have a feeling the people who are scared into not smoking by these ads probably wouldn't have started smoking anyway.

It is a measurable fact that, since the mid 90s when graphic pictures first started to be used in anti-smoking campaigns, the number of smokers in the United States has dropped significantly. Yes, people continue to take up the habit, but for some ten years the number of new smokers has not kept pace with the number of smokers who stop (either by choice or by death.) This is shown by the tobacco industries own reports, brought to light in open court during the various lawsuits against the industry.

Campaigns such as No Stank You have been quite effective; and when Minnesota eliminated its state-run anti-smoking campaign at the end of 2003, teen smoking jumped by mid 2004. (link) What have not worked were the preachy ones run by DARE and similar groups.

So which do you think has the biggest effect on smokers? Or do you think it's a combination of factors working on them (in which case, the correlation between the graphic images and the decrease in smokers is no less unproved)?

I very much doubt it. :eyes:

With regards to people who are already addicted to nicotine, of course there are more effective direct pressures. Friends, family, health and a growing awareness of the dangers of second hand smoke which is changing public opinion of smoking very likely play are larger role than anti-smoking campaigns. Those opinions, however, are shaped in non-smokers by graphic campaigns.

and continues to influence me. I do not want to be throwing so much money away regularly on something I really do not need (as long I stay away from them).

Maybe a better formulation would be that the cost combined equally with my knowledge of the powerfully addictive properties of cigarettes keeps me from smoking.

Graphic ads just annoy me.

But as I say, that may just be me (although judging from the poll results, I'm not alone).

I gave it up because I wanted something else: a relationship with my nonsmoking life partner and NOT to be considered a smoker (I liked the idea of being a nonsmoker). I suffered no withdrawal symptoms. My mother did the same thing after smoking for 50 years: no withdrawal symptoms. BUT she had been told by a doctor who saved her life when she had a bleeding ulcer that he wouldn't be able to do it again if she continued to smoke. She quit cold turkey.

early morning. During the day it never bothered me. 3 packs a day for decades, a smoker for over 30 years. A ex-smoker for 6 months now.

And pictures would NEVER make me want to quit.

Pictures had no impact. It's an addiction. A medical problem.

Those ads are so manipulative and obnoxious that I almost want to start smoking (or at least purchase some tobacco products) as a way of protesting against the obvious attempts those ads make to manipulate me and others.

Smokers need to call for affirmative action.Over 25% of the population smokes. The %'s of minorities in this country that want AA are less than that.Where are MY RIGHTS?

When you can debunk the facts.

:rofl:

Would just like my rights respected like the next person.

:shrug:

A dumb one, IMO.

But, it was a choice I made 41 years ago. Just don't try to
control what I do w/my body or make people that come into my
place of business not enjoy themselves. If they don't like the
smoke,they can go somewhere else.

because my dumb employer made a dumb choice forty years ago.

The issue isn't your right to smoke, the issue is whether you have the right to give other people cancer.

In the 70's , Cancer was caused by coffee,sugar,saccharine,etc.
Give me a break!

First you compare smoking to civil rights and now you're on about how it doesn't cause cancer?

:shrug:

Or graphic photos of bowel cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, etc.

I'm sure the images of slaughter would hit at least some meat eaters in their empathy centers. I don't think it's likely that images of colon cancer would have the same effect, however.

I grew up poor so we grew a lot of our own vegetables, raised livestock and hunted. If I watched a slaughtering movie I would probably just judge how efficient the slaughter was.

It's a physical addiction and one of the hardest ones in the world to completely get out of. It's even harder if you start/started in your adolescent/teen years, which 8 out of 10 smokers have.

It didn't take the ALA van of tarred-up organ displays when I was 7. It was because I lost my grandmother at the age of 49 that I never started. I also lost my future mother-in-law because of an aortic aneurysm (being a heavy smoker didn't help that) and my FIL, who recently quit after 35 years, has emphysema. The SIL recently had her appendix and gall bladder removed, gets winded easily and has frequent upper respiratory infections and pneumonia. Still smokes, doesn't care.

Losing someone you're extremely close to should stick with a kid the rest of his/her life. Unfortunately, it didn't with my sister, who still smokes after 20 years. Unlike her, I learned from other people's mistakes and didn't make them on my own.

I swear that every time I thought about quitting, I'd see one of those smug, pretentious, holier-than-though "Truth" ads and it would keep me smoking for another 6 months, easy. It's no coincidence that I quit smoking after I stopped seeing those ads.

In fact, I'm gonna go have one right now.

Manufacturers of hard liquor but images of death on their ads and products -- not because they have to -- but because they have evidence that the heaviest drinkers have a death wish. The icon on Bacardi bottles is a black bat. Kahluha uses images of tombs (really fancy graves). It appeals to the subconcious mind saying something like "you are going to die anyway, might as well do what you like ...here is a really cool way to kill yourself slowly"

I'm not sure that smoking is all that different.

The bat on the Bacardi bottle is a fruit bat, because the original Bacardi distillery used to have fruit bats living in the rafters.

Kahlua bottles are various scenes from Mexico. Spanish missions and so on.

What's Captain Morgan signify? The deserve of heavy drinkers to capture Spanish treasure galleons?