New Anti-Smoking Ads

[Ando85]

You have probably seen some of these new anti-smoking ads put out by the CDC. They introduce you to a person that now lives with some of the horrible effects of smoking such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zWB4dLYChM

Of course everyone knows how harmful smoking is, but some do it anyway. What are your thoughts on these kind of ads?

 

[Nouw]

I suppose if people are going to be shocked out of smoking through a video, instead of statistics and science, it's doing its job well. I don't particularly like these videos, it gives the message that 'if you smoke you're going to end up like me' which isn't necessarily true. But then again, they're having to resort to these shock tactics because facts and figures won't stop them. Hmm... I suppose they're a necessary 'evil' then. I think.

 

[Ectoplasmicz]

Props to the woman who did the ad. Brave person who wanted to get the message out. But I think some of the ads are going too far. Yes, to make smokers quit you may need to use shock tactics, but it all starts to come across negatively. I know they want it to, but I don't know, they are starting to not sit right with me.

Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, but this just doesn't deter me. Yes I'm aware of the health risks and all that, but I smoke because I enjoy the taste (crucify me, go on). It's a decision I have made, and if one day I decide to stop, It's going to be because I felt it was time. It's not going to be because of a confronting advertisement.

 

[Ando85]

Props to the woman who did the ad. Brave person who wanted to get the message out. But I think some of the ads are going too far. Yes, to make smokers quit you may need to use shock tactics, but it all starts to come across negatively. I know they want it to, but I don't know, they are starting to not sit right with me.

Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, but this just doesn't deter me. Yes I'm aware of the health risks and all that, but I smoke because I enjoy the taste (crucify me, go on). It's a decision I have made, and if one day I decide to stop, It's going to be because I felt it was time. It's not going to be because of a confronting advertisement.

Yeah I agree. Shock and scare tactics usually don't deter me from anything. There is also the stat that "1 out of every 3 smokers dies of a smoking related illness". The other 2/3 eventually die from something else anyway. If it wasn't smoking related illness then it would just be something else. It isn't like I'm going to drop dead before I hit 30 years old.

 

[Korolev]

They work for the purposes of keeping smoking low. To those who are already addicted or just plain don't give a damn, these ads aren't going to work. I know they won't, because they are still smoking despite the previous ads. At the end of the day, you can't force people to stop smoking.

But you can prevent them from starting. These ads help with that. They might help a few smokers who have thought about quitting to make a serious attempt to stop, but they usually fail at this as most smokers either switch the channel or blank it from their mind (which is their choice and an understandable one - you don't want to watch things that make you uncomfortable).

The ad campaigns should be maintained, because it's only just now that we're starting to see a decline in smoking-related cancers. All those decades of smoking in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's was killing people right up till now (quitting doesn't stop all the damage done from smoking in the past). As a medical student, I can tell you that cigarettes were and are one of the worst man-made health hazards in the history of humanity. I've been around hospital wards. I've seen the stats. Cigarettes are evil - not the smokers, but the product and those who make it are evil. Internal documents in the 60's and the 70's PROVE that the manufacturers knew PRECISELY how deadly and addictive and dangerous their product was, and they spent billions trying to snow the public with misinformation to keep the truth from getting out there.

I don't hate smokers. But I do hate the companies that make the products - they are some of the sickest, vilest human beings on the planet. Not the worse people, but not too far off from the worst. You know what cigarette companies are doing now that most of the developed world has stopped smoking? It's preying on kids in the third world countries like Indonesia and China. Yeah. That's what they're doing. They're literally getting brown, yellow and black kids addicted to cigarettes, the bastards. And the governments of those nations are too corrupt and make too much money from tobacco to stop them.

Cigarette manufacturers - on a moral level, not that much better than murderers. What else do you call a bunch of people who dream about ways to get poor developing nation children addicted to cigarettes?

 

[Korolev]

Props to the woman who did the ad. Brave person who wanted to get the message out. But I think some of the ads are going too far. Yes, to make smokers quit you may need to use shock tactics, but it all starts to come across negatively. I know they want it to, but I don't know, they are starting to not sit right with me.

Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, but this just doesn't deter me. Yes I'm aware of the health risks and all that, but I smoke because I enjoy the taste (crucify me, go on). It's a decision I have made, and if one day I decide to stop, It's going to be because I felt it was time. It's not going to be because of a confronting advertisement.

Yeah I agree. Shock and scare tactics usually don't deter me from anything. There is also the stat that "1 out of every 3 smokers dies of a smoking related illness". The other 2/3 eventually die from something else anyway. If it wasn't smoking related illness then it would just be something else. It isn't like I'm going to drop dead before I hit 30 years old.

Yes, we all die from something. But cancer's a pretty bad way to go. That's an understatement. There are "good" ways of dying.... and then there's pretty awful, horrific ways of dying. I've been to see and talk with cancer patients. Terminal ones. The amount of pain they are in, from the bone metastasis alone, is terrifying. Not even morphine can dull the pain.

Again, you're right - we all die from something. But there are ways I don't want to die, and I don't want to raise the risk of dying in those ways.

You can say you're not scared of lung cancer. But I bet you haven't seen someone, talked to someone, treated someone with terminal cancer. And while I haven't treated them, I have talked to them in the wards. Lung Cancer is pretty goddamn scary. All cancers are pretty scary. You might not fear death - but do you fear agonizing, crippling pain and a slow, slow, slow, death in which you slowly degenerate and lose functions due to the masses of cancer that grow in you

Now you can say "Well, I could get cancer anyway even if I don't smoke". Yes - true. But smoking raises the odds of cancer or other fatal respiratory diseases significantly. That's like saying "I could fall down the stairs and die anyday, so I'm not going to bother with being careful when I run down the stairs and break neck speed" or "I could die in a car-crash anyway, so who cares if I'm drunk and wear no seat belt!".

And yes - other things do raise the risk of cancer. But cigarettes are one of the biggest, if not the biggest risk factor.

 

[Ando85]

Props to the woman who did the ad. Brave person who wanted to get the message out. But I think some of the ads are going too far. Yes, to make smokers quit you may need to use shock tactics, but it all starts to come across negatively. I know they want it to, but I don't know, they are starting to not sit right with me.

Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, but this just doesn't deter me. Yes I'm aware of the health risks and all that, but I smoke because I enjoy the taste (crucify me, go on). It's a decision I have made, and if one day I decide to stop, It's going to be because I felt it was time. It's not going to be because of a confronting advertisement.

Yeah I agree. Shock and scare tactics usually don't deter me from anything. There is also the stat that "1 out of every 3 smokers dies of a smoking related illness". The other 2/3 eventually die from something else anyway. If it wasn't smoking related illness then it would just be something else. It isn't like I'm going to drop dead before I hit 30 years old.

Yes, we all die from something. But cancer's a pretty bad way to go. That's an understatement. There are "good" ways of dying.... and then there's pretty awful, horrific ways of dying. I've been to see and talk with cancer patients. Terminal ones. The amount of pain they are in, from the bone metastasis alone, is terrifying. Not even morphine can dull the pain.

Again, you're right - we all die from something. But there are ways I don't want to die, and I don't want to raise the risk of dying in those ways.

You can say you're not scared of lung cancer. But I bet you haven't seen someone, talked to someone, treated someone with terminal cancer. And while I haven't treated them, I have talked to them in the wards. Lung Cancer is pretty goddamn scary. All cancers are pretty scary. You might not fear death - but do you fear agonizing, crippling pain and a slow, slow, slow, death in which you slowly degenerate and lose functions due to the masses of cancer that grow in you

Now you can say "Well, I could get cancer anyway even if I don't smoke". Yes - true. But smoking raises the odds of cancer or other fatal respiratory diseases significantly. That's like saying "I could fall down the stairs and die anyday, so I'm not going to bother with being careful when I run down the stairs and break neck speed" or "I could die in a car-crash anyway, so who cares if I'm drunk and wear no seat belt!".

And yes - other things do raise the risk of cancer. But cigarettes are one of the biggest, if not the biggest risk factor.

Yeah I had considered that. It is one thing to die peacefully in your sleep at 80 years old and a completely other thing to die of cancer at 80 years old when it comes to agony. So I see where you are coming from. I don't fear death itself like mentioned, but I do fear agonizing pain.

I actually have thought of the car crash scenario. I would never do something that reckless, especially not repeatedly. The difference is say you do drive drunk that one time you are greatly increasing your risk of dying right then and there. It isn't the same type of death caused gradually over time like smoking.

Perhaps that is why a lot of people smoke. They don't consider the long term consequences as much as they would an immediate death or serious injury like driving drunk. There is also the addiction factor. You can be an alcoholic too, but driving while drunk isn't addictive. Like someone mentioned the ads probably would work better at preventing someone to start smoking, rather than inspire people who already do to quit due to the addiction factor. One of the ads has a man talking about how he was smoking a cigarette while he was in the process of having a heart attack. I also read a sad story of a man dying of cancer due to smoking just 8 weeks after he was diagnosed. It mentioned how even after such a tragic event some family members at the funeral lit up right afterward.

If there was no addiction I would quit immediately, but it is a tough habit to break. Several reasons as well would be to improve my health. Not just lower cancer risk, but better respiratory health overall. It is also an expensive habit that really adds up over time.

 

[Queen Michael]

That was unpleasant. But I'm not going to start smoking anyway, so it's kind of stupid that I watched it. But if you ask me, these ads should focus more on the many people who want to quit smoking but can't. That's the biggest argument against smoking.

 

[putowtin]

Shock tactic's really don't work anymore,
we've become a society of "ehh, been there, done that, seen that" People don't seem to accept the realities until it's too late or it happens to someone they love.

 

[manic_depressive13]

Ooooh, what will it be? Gangrene or cancer? I'm dying to find out.

This seems like more of a reason to legalise euthanasia than for me to quit smoking.

 

[madster11]

We've had these ads for years.
Our packets have to be hidden from view in shops and soon we're going plain packaging (blank cardboard so no fonts or pictures).
This is after massive tax increases so a pack costs about $20.

Our government is pretty retarded.
People know smoking is bad. THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT.

So maybe the government needs to fuck off. If i want to drink acid i should be allowed to, just the same as if someone wants to inhale a bunch of bad shit they should be able to.

But no, go ahead idiots, ban everything bad for peoples health so our population does nothing but grow and become old. It doesn't cost anything to keep 5 billion 100year olds alive or anything.

 

[Starik20X6]

That was a great ad. I was at work once when someone with the same condition came in. Except she didn't have one of those voice regulator things- she had to stick her thumb in the hole so she could speak. It was one of the most horrifying things I have ever witnessed. As soon as she left I had to sit down, I felt like I was going to vomit.

Oh wow, and the captcha is 'plugged nickel'.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Which begs the question...
why not ban tobacco?
Prevention is better than a cure. Something I would assume an agency called the Centre for Disease Control would be experts in.

Anyway, in Britain we don't go after the smokers.
Our anti-smoking ads are "If you smoke, you will murder your children in their sleep!"
Seriously, one shows smoke-snake wrap itself around a baby's neck.

 

[hooksashands]

All this and tobacco is still legal under federal law. You know the funniest part? It doesn't even get you high. If you're gonna let people destroy their bodies, at least give 'em a substance that makes everything better.

Unrelated note: OP, I <3 your Citan avatar.

 

[Gerishnakov]

This is a slightly different issue in the UK because of the National Health Service.

People who smoke and end up with debilitating diseases as a result, but have no private health insurance, cost the British taxpayer money. So the government is trying get people to stop smoking literally in order to cut health costs in the long run. It's for the same reason that we're trying to get people to eat healthily, exercise, drink less, etc...

Smoking does get singled out though. Not being a smoker, but having smoked a variety of things throughout my life, I can't see why people do it. It seems to have no discernable benefit to it, unlike eating or drinking.

 

[Rawne1980]

I smoke.

I watched the ad.

I'm still smoking.

While we're on the subject of ad campaigns. Hundreds of people a year die from drink driving. Do you know how many die from drink driving while juggling ... 2, total.

If you are going to drink drive, play it safe and juggle.

 

[Ando85]

All this and tobacco is still legal under federal law. You know the funniest part? It doesn't even get you high. If you're gonna let people destroy their bodies, at least give 'em a substance that makes everything better.

Unrelated note: OP, I <3 your Citan avatar.

Yeah good point. Tobacco the first few times gives a pretty good euphoria, but eventually you just have to smoke to keep the edge off. So it is not really worth it at all.

off topic: Thanks! I love Xenogears.