Government launches £2.7m campaign on "hidden dangers" of smoking
Friday, December 28, 2012 at 9:38 Welcome back. Hope you had a good Christmas.
I am about to drive to BBC Cambridge where I've been booked to appear on the BBC News channel.
Earlier today I was on LBC (7:05) and BBC Radio London (8:10). Subject: the Government's new anti-smoking ad campaign.
The £2.7 million campaign highlights the "hidden dangers" of smoking. According to the Department of Health press release:
Smokers will be told that just 15 cigarettes cause a mutation that can lead to cancerous tumours in a return to hard-hitting health campaigns, the Department of Health announced today.
The new ads - featuring a tumour growing on a cigarette as it is smoked - are the first shock adverts since the "fatty cigarette" ad eight years ago. They aim to encourage people to quit over health concerns, by making the invisible damage visible.
The campaign comes in response to statistics that show more than a third of smokers still think the health risks associated with smoking are greatly exaggerated.
I suggested that shock tactics may have some initial impact but the long-term impact is negligible.
Graphic health warnings, for example, appear to have had relatively little impact on smokers' behaviour. Why this is I don't know. Perhaps it's because some of the images (rotting teeth and oral cancer, for example) are rarely if ever witnessed by most people in real life. Rightly or wrongly, such images are perceived to be disproportionate scaremongering.
Another example is the flaccid cigarette that represents impotence. I'm not saying that smoking doesn't cause impotence but I'm sceptical of the risk. After all, back in the Fifties, when a majority of the male population smoked, the country experienced a baby boom!
Anyway, LBC invited smokers to phone in and say whether the Government's latest campaign will encourage them to quit. You might like to comment here too.
PS. I have developed quite a croak overnight. I thought Lemsip would help but I still sound like I've got a bad case of smoker's cough!
Reader Comments (13)
"The campaign comes in response to statistics that show more than a third of smokers still think the health risks associated with smoking are greatly exaggerated"
That's because a third of smokers still have a brain and they know how to use it.
And they're going to spend another 2.7 m of taxpayer's money on yet another grossly exaggerated series of advertisements in the hope that they can fool a few more this time? Their blind optimism knows no bounds.
Still, no doubt a large part of that 2.7 m will pay lots of mortgages and food bills among the troughers in TCI, so for them it will have been a worthwhile campaign, even if it makes no difference to the numbers of smokers.
'The campaign comes in response to statistics that show more than a third of smokers still think the health risks associated with smoking are greatly exaggerated.'
More than a third or close to 50%? If anything, I believe many smokers are perplexed - if smoking is as harmful as the government maintains why has tobacco not been totally banned? At least, why haven't TPTB set a long term date? This paradox in itself is sufficient to instil scepticism and mistrust. One could be forgiven for assuming that tobacco taxation takes precedent over genuine concerns for health. It should also be noted that the Exchequer profits the most, to the tune of c.80% of the retail price. That'd be in the order of 800 - 900% more than tobacco companies. A Middle Man scenario beyond the wildest dreams of most private companies. And one that yields at least 70% net profit after accounting for their own (exaggerated) estimates of smoking related costs.
The high brow answer that graphic images are ineffective is because of Professor Ernest Becker's 'Terror Management' theory. That as humans we have an unconscious fear of mortality and one way of dealing with it is through our self-esteem which provides us with a buffer against death-related anxiety.
One source of self esteem is through smoking. The net result is that “Thus, mortality-salient warnings may increase the tendency to favor smoking under certain circumstances.”
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2009-18672-001
@ David
"...if smoking is as harmful as the government maintains why has tobacco not been totally banned?"
Even more of a paradox is why are smokers not dropping like flies around us? After all, according to TCI smoking kills 50% of its users, not to mention all those poor souls who were exposed to second-hand smoke before the government in its infinite wisdom excommunicated all smokers from the pubs. So where are all the body bags? Where are the hundreds of thousands a year with "smoking" marked as 'cause of death' on their death certificates? How many smokers have you known that have died an early death directly as a result of smoking? I guess there must be some, but I'm 63 and I've had a far from sheltered life, yet I have never known anyone who has died as a result of smoking. Nor do I have any knowledge of friends of friends who have died from smoking. Which rather lends the lie to all the outlandish claims made by TCI.
TCI is under the mistaken impression that we don't have eyes in our heads and that we are unable to process information other than that fed to us by the propagandists.
Fools. Someone should read them the story about the shepherd boy who cried "wolf".
Surely if there are legions of smokers who think the risks are exaggerated, then it's logical for a government who think smoking is dangerous to spend money to win them round?
This mutation thing is interesting scientifically, but irrelevant to most smokers. Most people's attitude to risk is, how many people do I know who've died from this? That's why most people choose to wear seat belts and why motorbikes are generally regarded as dangerous.
"15 cigarettes cause a mutation that can lead to cancerous tumours "
I think a 5-year old wouldn't have any trouble refuting that statement
So they know people don't respond to shock tactics yet they're going to spend more on more of the same. Not too bright, are they?
There is an excellent article by Lynne Eldridge MD, where she says that statistics show that nearly 80% of people diagnosed with lung cancer now, in 2012, are non-smokers.
If the Government or health bodies want and expect people to believe their trumped up charges about smoking, why on earth do they not answer these figures?
You can see Lynne Eldridge's article in full here: http://lungcancer.about.com/b/2012/11/29/why-anti-smoking-campaigns-arent-enough-to-eliminate-lung-cancer-deaths.htm
"...statistics show that nearly 80% of people diagnosed with lung cancer now, in 2012, are non-smokers."
Back when Doll did his studies, the majority smoked, so it was easy to arbitrarily pin all blame for everything on "the smokers".
Nowadays, when the majority non-smokes, given the same studies Doll did would probably result in pinning all the blame for everything on "the non-smokers".
So in essence, it may be that the very foundation of assigning risk and this idea of using correlations is a faulty way to analyze and does nothing to forward the advancement of the medical sciences, and in fact my have set it back, retarding it due to wasting resources on anti-smoking that should have been spent on researching cures - instead of assigning blames, in other words.
What we have seen in the BBC article is nothing more than a typical ASH press release, isn't it? It is as far removed from reality as a fairy tale.
Clearly, the whole advertising intention is to press people to make new year resolutions to stop smoking and to press them to keep to their resolution. That's all. The whole thing is similar to their Stoptober campaign - a publicity stunt.
I was reading the comments under the BBC article today. If you read the 'all comments' tab, rather than the editor's picks (or whatever it's called), it's really interesting to see how many people are objecting to these warnings in one way or another, and how heartily sick of all the attacks on smokers many people are.
Of interest too might be this article on the 'side effects of health warnings'. It's a shame TPTB aren't paying any attention to research of this kind.
http://www.sirc.org/news/sideeffects.html
Sounds like the Tobacco Control groups have jumped the shark by saying (that's the message I got from the advert) that smoking just 15 cigarettes in your lifetime will cause you to get cancer. That's not 15/day or week or month or year. That's 15 full stop.
Spouting such nonsense is more likely to be counter-productive to their cause.