Seeking to encourage smokers to quit and deter children from ever beginning to smoke, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a national ad campaign named "Tips from Former Smokers".
The campaign that depicts the harsh reality of illness and damage suffered as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke will run for at least 12 weeks beginning March 19 on television, radio, and billboards, online, and in theaters, magazines, and newspapers nationwide.
According to the CDC, the ads focus on smoking-related lung and throat cancer, heart attack, stroke, Buerger's disease, and asthma. The campaign features suggestions from former smokers on how to get dressed when you have a stoma (a surgical opening in the neck) or artificial limbs, what scars from heart surgery look like and reasons why people have quit. The ads will be tagged with 1-800-QUIT-NOW, a toll-free number to access quit support across the country, or the www.smokefree.gov web site, which provides free quitting information.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden said, "Although they may be tough to watch, the ads show real people living with real, painful consequences from smoking. There is sound evidence that supports the use of these types of hard-hitting images and messages to encourage smokers to quit, to keep children from ever beginning to smoke, and to drastically reduce the harm caused by tobacco."
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is estimated that 46 million people, or 20.6% of adults (aged 18 years and older), in the United States smoke cigarettes. Every day, over 1,000 youth under 18 become daily smokers. Cigarette smoking accounts for about 443,000 deaths, or 1 of every 5 deaths, in the U.S. annually.
Smoking is said to cost the American economy almost $200 billion a year, in medical costs and lost productivity.
The FDA's warning label rule, that would have come into effect beginning September 2012 , making it mandatory for cigarette packets to display graphic images depicting the effects of smoking cigarettes was declared unconstitutional by a District of Columbia federal judge late last month. The FDA has appealed the federal court ruling.
Will the new anti-smoking ad campaign serve as a wake-up call to smokers and potential smokers? At least, that's what it is meant to be and motivate the Americans to quit smoking, according to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services. President Barack Obama, who was once a smoker, stopped smoking in February 2011, according to Michelle Obama. Speaking to a roundtable of print reporters, Mrs. Obama said, “Yes, he has,” and “it’s been almost a year,” when asked by reporters whether he had quit smoking, according to The Associated Press. Mrs. Obama added that “he never smoked a lot.”
The campaign that depicts the harsh reality of illness and damage suffered as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke will run for at least 12 weeks beginning March 19 on television, radio, and billboards, online, and in theaters, magazines, and newspapers nationwide.
According to the CDC, the ads focus on smoking-related lung and throat cancer, heart attack, stroke, Buerger's disease, and asthma. The campaign features suggestions from former smokers on how to get dressed when you have a stoma (a surgical opening in the neck) or artificial limbs, what scars from heart surgery look like and reasons why people have quit. The ads will be tagged with 1-800-QUIT-NOW, a toll-free number to access quit support across the country, or the www.smokefree.gov web site, which provides free quitting information.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden said, "Although they may be tough to watch, the ads show real people living with real, painful consequences from smoking. There is sound evidence that supports the use of these types of hard-hitting images and messages to encourage smokers to quit, to keep children from ever beginning to smoke, and to drastically reduce the harm caused by tobacco."
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is estimated that 46 million people, or 20.6% of adults (aged 18 years and older), in the United States smoke cigarettes. Every day, over 1,000 youth under 18 become daily smokers. Cigarette smoking accounts for about 443,000 deaths, or 1 of every 5 deaths, in the U.S. annually.
Smoking is said to cost the American economy almost $200 billion a year, in medical costs and lost productivity.
The FDA's warning label rule, that would have come into effect beginning September 2012 , making it mandatory for cigarette packets to display graphic images depicting the effects of smoking cigarettes was declared unconstitutional by a District of Columbia federal judge late last month. The FDA has appealed the federal court ruling.
Will the new anti-smoking ad campaign serve as a wake-up call to smokers and potential smokers? At least, that's what it is meant to be and motivate the Americans to quit smoking, according to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services. President Barack Obama, who was once a smoker, stopped smoking in February 2011, according to Michelle Obama. Speaking to a roundtable of print reporters, Mrs. Obama said, “Yes, he has,” and “it’s been almost a year,” when asked by reporters whether he had quit smoking, according to The Associated Press. Mrs. Obama added that “he never smoked a lot.”
“I hate it,” Mrs. Obama said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 2007 of Mr. Obama’s smoking habit. In the interview, Mrs. Obama said the she had made quitting smoking a requirement for her husband’s run for the White House. “That’s why he doesn’t do it anymore. I’m proud to say. I outed him. I’m the one who outed him on the smoking,” she exclaimed.
Although Mrs. Obama was initially able to convince the president to quit smoking, Mr. Obama may have had a relapse sometime between running for the Oval Office and his first medical examination since becoming president. The Guardian reports that Mr. Obama was told by doctors at the Navy hospital in 2010 to ”continue smoking cessation efforts,” implying that Mr. Obama was having trouble kicking the habit.
Since Mr. Obama has reportedly quit smoking within the last year, it is likely that the president, like many former smokers, continues to struggle with tobacco cravings.
The CDC’s “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign uses the personal exposure of the campaign’s participants to smoking to convey a perspective that is not always captured by statistics about the numerous deaths and illnesses caused by tobacco. The CDC notes that none of the individuals featured in the ads are actors. All of the individuals in the anti-smoking campaign are real people with real diseases.
The CDC also notes that most of the participants were diagnosed with smoking-related illnesses when they were young. Many of the participants, for example, are in their 30s and 40s. All of the participants are volunteers who wanted to send a single message to smokers and those who are thinking about smoking: “Quit smoking now. Or better yet-don’t start.”
The CDC’s anti-smoking campaign is based on scientific evidence. Studies have suggested that “hard-hitting, graphic, and emotionally impactful” campaigns are successful. Anti-smoking campaigns that appeal to people’s emotions, encourage smokers to stop, and provide information on how to quit are generally effective. One of the ads, featured in the CDC’s anti-smoking campaign, has three former smokers giving tips on how they were able to stop smoking.
The CDC says that its anti-smoking campaign is an investment in health. The CDC cites a lack of federally funded, extensive, mass-media campaign efforts, using the mediums of TV, radio, billboard, magazine, newspaper, theater, and online placements, to brief the public about the damaging effects of smoking and to encourage smokers to quit smoking.
The lack of such campaigns has been harmful to tobacco control and prohibition efforts. Unfortunately, many states no longer have the necessary funds with which to conduct tobacco education campaigns. The CDC says that the tobacco industry spends more than $1 million an hour trying to sell cigarettes in the United States, but the organization is confident that the “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign will help cancel out the impacts of cigarette advertising.
The CDC’s anti-smoking campaign will run nationally for 12 weeks beginning Monday, March 19. The campaign will include television, radio, billboard, magazine, newspaper, theater, and online placements. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other online networks will help propagate the CDC’s message. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unveiled its new national anti-smoking campaign, called “Tips from Former Smokers.” While the title sounds innocuous, the images are anything but. Be prepared to hear (and see) graphic tales of heart attacks, limb amputations, and tracheotomy holes on billboards, radio and TV. The more subtle, but equally dramatic subtext is that each person was diagnosed with their smoking-related ailment before age 40.
This is the first ever paid advertising effort (to the tune of $54 million) by the CDC, but Director Thomas Frieden, M.D. feels the campaign can potentially persuade as many as 50,000 Americans to stop smoking. The shock factor is squarely aimed at a weary “heard-it-all-before” public (as well as the Saw XIV generation). By jolting people back into consciousness about the dangers of smoking, the CDC is sending a clear message to smokers to quit now, and discourage young people from even starting smoking.
But how did we even get here, people? Growing up, I had my own anti-smoking proponents, called my parents. They were such militant anti-smokers that even after a playdate at a friend’s house (whose parents smoked), I’d be stripped naked in the foyer and thrown into a shower while my mom held her nose to start the washing machine. But I understand why: I heard stories about my dad’s Tio Chago, the uncle with the tracheotomy tube who died in his mid-40s. My mom’s Tia Rosa, also a chain smoker, died from cancer in her 50s. My dearest cousin Carmen (Rosa’s granddaughter), who never smoked a day in her life, recently died from lung cancer that spread to her brain at age 62.
In my rebellious 20s I became one of those annoying social smokers: drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. When I lived (briefly) in Italy, where everyone smoked liked chimneys and drank like fish, it was hard to say no to, well, anything. Not that I love dating myself, but that was more than a decade ago. I consider myself lucky to have not gotten hooked, but I've watched my friends try time and time again to quit.
In the past 40 years, even with all the medical research done, the cigarette companies indicted, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would even light up, let alone buy a pack (which ain’t cheap!). After decades of decline, the U.S. smoking rate has stalled at about 20 percent in recent years. So we Americans apparently still need the anti-smoking message drilled into our skulls, as graphically as possible. Research shows that shock value is effective. Since 2002, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, a former smoker, has made the City adamantly smoke-free. In 2009, he launched a similarly graphic ad campaign, complete with amputees and oozing decay. Guess who was Bloomberg's health director at the time? Dr. Frieden. Currently, the only 14 percent of adult New Yorkers smoke -- an all-time low, according to the NYC Department of Health.
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