Anti-Smoking Campaigns*

I don't smoke. In my entire lifetime, I've only ever smoked anything once: It was flavored tobacco in a hookah lamp during 2006. In my opinion, smoking is a gross, disgusting habit that I will never be able to understand. For a while, I was extremely bitter toward smokers because they were ruining a perfectly good set of lungs while I had to constantly deal with asthma (and my asthma isn't even that bad). I later realized that I didn't have much ground to maintain that bitterness because I ruin a perfectly good liver every time I drink beer. And I'm not about to give that up.

The point is, I very much would like to see the number of smokers in the world decrease, especially when it comes to the people I care about. I don't like smoking. And yet, with every new anti-smoking campaign that comes out, especially the ones put out by the State of New York, I find myself more and more alienated and irritated. To the point that looking at the ads makes me want to buy a pack of cigarettes, light one, and then put it out in someone's eye. Or at least use it to burn holes in the terrible ads. I really began to consider why someone such as myself, who used to be so adamantly anti-smoking, could become so anti- anti-smoking campaigns. My reasoning is as follows:

1) Personal change:

While I am rather annoyed when people smoke around me because they are damaging my health as well as theirs, there isn't much I can do about it outside of taking the cigarette out of their mouth or hand and putting it out. I did that once to a friend. I thought she was going to kill me. (She probably should've. Them shits is expensive.) Also, ultimately, deciding to smoke is a personal choice. We all have to die from something, and we're all well aware of the health risks. If you really want to smoke knowing what it does to your insides, you're going to do it and there won't be much that will change that. I've accepted it.

2) Related to the above, everyone is well aware that smoking does horrible things to your body and your health. Everyone is well aware of how much your life expectancy can become much shorter if you smoke. Everyone is well aware of how much it makes you smell, how it yellows your teeth and nails and how many people are turned off by it. Knowing all of that, if people still decide to smoke, they're going to smoke. And no amount of advertising is going to deter them. The strategies are out-dated. People know they should quit. Many people try and fail every year. Other succeed. What we should be doing with anti-smoking campaigns rather than guilting people into quitting or grossing them out with pictures of diseased lungs, is offering them support. Let them know they're doing a great job. Nicorette had a great campaign with different characters attached to a "Suck-o-meter" that registered how much it sucked to quit smoking. Then, they popped a piece of Nicorette and the Suck-o-meter went down because quitting sucked less. That's the tone anti-smoking campaigns should have. I don't even smoke and I'm sick of the condescending tone and disease-infested organs plastered everywhere. And I'm sick of the guilt- and shame-inducing headlines I see on TV and in the subway. It's enough. It's not working.** Get it out of everyone's face.

*Full disclosure: I own stock in a holding company whose main business is cigarette production, distribution and sales

**In fact, studies have shown that anti-smoking ads INCREASE usage among current smokers.